To protect a word file from copying and pasting

Before you go any further, please read my page on "No Copies - No Editing."

https://www.addbalance.com/word/nocopies.htm#StartPage

The ultimate answer is that although you can make things harder, you cannot stop copying, though. In the final analysis, though, this goes back to the aphorism that if two people know a secret, it is no longer a secret.

If you protect a document / restrict editing for "filling in forms," text cannot be selected for copying. It is not difficult to overcome this protection, nor the "No Changes" protection Filip suggested. The "filling in forms" is highly intrusive protection and you may want "No changes" instead, with the addition of a shape.

If you follow Filip's suggestion, I'm afraid text can still be selected and copied into the clipboard. However, you could, before applying the restriction, add a borderless rectangle with transparent fill in front of your text. Anyone trying to copy would select the rectangle, not the text. That has to be done for each page of the document.

As you can see, this allows selection (and copying) of text even though it does not allow editing.

The shape that overlays must be a color for fill, set to 100% transparency.

With a borderless transparent shape in front of the text prior to restriction of editing, the text cannot be selected.

Here is a temporary link to a document set up this way.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fw3b2fobnuijiqw/deleteme%20transparent%20shape%20blocking%20copying.docx?dl=0

Hi,

You can protect your Word file from copying and pasting by using the following steps:

1. Open the Word file that you want to protect.
2. Select the text that you want to protect from copying and pasting.
3. Click on the "Review" tab in the ribbon at the top of the screen.
4. Click on "Restrict Editing" in the "Protect" group.
5. In the "Restrict Editing" pane that appears on the right side of the screen, check the box next to "Allow only this type of editing in the document."
6. In the drop-down list below this box, select "No changes (Read only)."
7. Click on "Yes, Start Enforcing Protection" at the bottom of the pane.
8. In the "Start Enforcing Protection" dialog box that appears, enter a password if you want to require one to unprotect the document.
9. Click on "OK" to apply the protection.

Once you have protected your Word file, anyone who tries to copy and paste the protected text will be prevented from doing so. They will only be able to read the text, but not edit or copy it.

I hope it`ll help you.

BR

This way of protecting data from editing or copy or paste is a failure method.....because it is easy to convert .docx file into zip and then delete the settings xml file.....then the file will open easily....