You may find the need to limit the availability of your PowerPoint presentation from time to time and find newer and more secure ways to do this. You would want to create the presentation in such a way that no one else can change the content on the slides. There are many reasons for protecting PowerPoint presentations (PPTs), such as:
- Sending your PPTs only for reviewing but not for editing.
- For providing PPTs to a group of people without modifying the contents.
- Maintaining ownership of the PPT content
- Other legal reasons that prevent the content from being changed.
There are a number of methods that you can employ to protect PPTs. This article will elaborate on how to protect PowerPoint through some of these methods.
How to protect PowerPoint using passwords
- Once you have started creating the PPT, or have completed it, go to the File menu on the toolbar and click on it. Then, select the “Save As” option.
- In the bottom left hand corner of the save box, you will see a tools button; click on it and choose general options.
- You will have two options here: password to open and password to modify.
- You can opt for either option depending on your requirement; whether you want to encrypt the entire PPT and monitor who opens it or whether you want to set a password to make changes in your PPT.
- Use passwords that are easy to remember but tough for others to guess. Write them down in a safe and secure place in case you forget them. You could also use the same set of passwords for an entire group of PPTs, which will make remembering the passwords easy.
Protect PowerPoint by saving it as a graphic file:
- To save your PPT slides as graphic files, first create them as you would normally do. Go through them once more to ensure they are finalized.
- Now, go to the File menu, click on it and select Save As from the drop down menu.
- When the Save box opens, go to “save as type” option and select the graphics format, preferably the PNG format, as it offers a much better quality than other formats such as JPD, TIF, GIF etc.
- Type in the file name and click on the Save button.
- You will be asked if you want to save only the current slide or all the slides; select whichever option you want to choose. You have successfully saved your slides as images.
- Now, start creating a fresh presentation and click on the Insert button from the toolbar. Then click on Picture and choose “From file” option.
- Locate the files that you saved earlier, select the image that you want for the particular slide and click OK.
- Do the same for other slides and now your PPT cannot be changed by others.
- Make sure that you save this PPT with a new filename so that it doesn’t override your previous one.
Protect PowerPoint by converting it into other formats:
- You can protect PPTs by converting it into a PDF format. The only drawback is that you will lose all animated data; however, people will not be able to change or delete any slides.
- You can use Adobe Acrobat, Prep4PDF, free PDF creator such as PrimoPDF or PDF995, add-ins from Microsoft and other software for this.
- You can also convert your PPT into SWF format, which will change your PPT in the form of an SWF movie file.
- You will be able to save all your animation and can also post this file on YouTube.
Protect PowerPoint by adding a digital signature:
- PowerPoint 2007 version allows you to add a digital signature to your file.
- Although it does not prevent someone from making changes in the PPT, it alerts you if someone alters the file because the process of changing it invalidates the digital signature.
Protecting PowerPoint by marking it as final:
- If you have PowerPoint 2007 installed on your computer, but you don’t want to prevent changes securely and only want others to know that no changes should be made to the PPT, you can use Mark as Final feature.
- Go to the office button on the toolbar, click on it and select prepare from the drop down menu.
- Next, click on Mark as Final option, which will turn off all typing, profiling and editing commands.
- The only drawback of this feature is that absolutely anybody can just go the menu and cancel these changes.
- Therefore, use this feature only when you are sure that total security is not required.
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How do you unlock a power point slide that is locked. I have access to all slides in this presentation, except one. I need to make some animation changes but can not get into this slide.
I do not know how this one slide was locked.
Any assistance would be great.