word doccument security

If the document is sent in e-mail as an attachement you have no control over that "file" once it is sent.

If you embed the document into the e-mail (HTML, of course) you have a little more flexibility on whether or not a "file" can be copied. But, as a worl object (or html text) that data can be selected and copied.

Unless you write your own application that views proprietory data (much like Acrobat) you don't have much (if any) control over the data.

Your best bet is to convert it to a PDF file. There is nothing you can do in Word itself to lock it. Since a user can disable VBA, there is nothing that can be done in code, either.

Hope this helps.

If you'd like to keep the document in MS Word format, you can "protect" the document.

Just to go Tools/Protect Document...

On the subsequent dialog box, choose the "forms" radio button, and enter a password (if you don't enter a password, any user can "unprotect" the document).

This will prevent a user from editing or copying the text (or any other element) in the document.

I cannot speak to the strength of this form of security. There may be vulnerabilities, but I don't know of any myself. This, however, is MUCH easier than converting your documents to another format like PDF.

Good luck.

Jay Eckles
www.jayeckles.com