Help with Microsoft Word (MS Word questions)

You'd still be able to lift the copy off with some OCR software on a scanner... Converting everything to oulines or bitmapping is your best bet..

... or don't share it with your clients

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/331/331150.html ...

Dunno about other readers such as foxit ... they can still show a text version of PDF file.

... or don't share it with your clients

sorry. i'll try to add something helpful before just being cunty. can you make the entire page into a button that when you click on it (to select text, for example) automatically goes to the next page?

ha, that'd be annoying and funny. do that one.

Dictate the key points to them over an encrypted phone line.
Of course they need to be in a sealed room free from listening devices and you must watch them on hidden camera to ensure no copying takes place. Strip search, mandatory. Then burn them after they have the information. Then burn the document and then yourself.

You'd still be able to lift the copy off with some OCR software on a scanner... Converting everything to oulines or bitmapping is your best bet..

. . . . which you can still read (and copy and edit) with OCR.

But you wouldn't even need to use OCR to copy a bitmap/outlined file/PDF (etc) as these can just be used to distribute the information.

The only real way to make it very difficult to copy and distribute is to host the text on a website as non-editible text, that needs to be scrolled through part by part (to avoid easy screen capture).

You cannot make a file impossible to copy, but you can make it difficult.

Dictate the key points to them over an encrypted phone line.

And then hunt them down and kill them.

Of course they need to be in a sealed room free from listening devices and you must watch them on hidden camera to ensure no copying takes place.

And then hunt them down and kill them.

Strip search, mandatory. Then burn them after they have the information. Then burn the document and then yourself.

And then hunt them down and kill them.

Or try a legal route, copyright/NDA etc.

Thanks for all the ideas everyone. The pdf idea will probably suffice for my needs.
I sub-contract to lift companies and the likely scenario where this document will get copied is when another sub-contractor submits his own risk assessment and has it rejected by a jobsworth end customer and the lift company 'gives' the other contractor ours to adapt to get them out of trouble. I know it happens, it's how we got previous versions.
As mentioned above, it's unlikely our competitors will have the technical know how to get through simple copy protection - unless they've got kids ;)

As for a good old burning, it's probably long overdue but unlikely to help our future business prospects.

but the americans cracked that years ago.

but the Polisish and British cracked that years ago.
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Surely a light coating of SecurityPaste™ would be sufficient to render any document impossible to copy easily or indeed, hygenically?

I have recently paid out a large sum of money for the preparation of a 90 page risk assesment document and I would ideally like to email it as an attachment to my customers but I don't want anyone copying it and using it for theirselves.
Is there a way of securing the document so that it cannot be copied other than by typing it out again word for word.
I was also thinking of something like a watermark on each page to identlfy it's source.

Depending on how many people you have to mail it out to, consider sending each person a slightly differently-worded version, so if it does leak, you've got a chance of identifying who sent it.

can you not fax it to them? then they'd only have hard copies?

Print the whole thing in Captcha text to prevent OCR?

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i learn everything from hollywood. they don't tell lies.

can you not fax it to them? then they'd only have hard copies?

90 pages - that'll go down well :)

Surely a light coating of SecurityPaste™ would be sufficient to render any document impossible to copy easily or indeed, hygenically?

Is SecurityPaste™ suitable for sending by email?

Is SecurityPaste™ suitable for sending by email?

is that the same stuff tynan uses for saddle security?

Why not just delete it?

Is there a way of securing the document so that it cannot be copied other than by typing it out again word for word.
I was also thinking of something like a watermark on each page to identlfy it's source.

Get a page layout programme. A free, simple on will do. Create large text and/or an image for the "watermark", make it all pale red, and put it on the page as an illustration. Run the text in over this (switch of the default "runaround" for the underlying image/text) in separate columns. Make the whole document a PDF.

MSWord, at least in some versions on the Mac that I know of, will also let you lock documents with a password. Check the options.

OCR scanner on your work (regardless of watermark) will make a digital version no problem... nothing's very secure really.

Print it in braille.
Deliver orally.
Print upside down, in mirror image, in sanskrit.
Write it in wet sand on a beach (using a twig), and take a polaroid.
Tattoo it onto a dozen chickens, and spit roast them in front of the audience - by the time they have finished reading, the words will be ready for eating.