Office 2007 Security Features

By now most of us must have finished exploring Microsoft’s Office 2007 Beta release. A lot has been heard and said about it but in this post we’ll look at the changes in the security options’ interface and additions to the security options.

Microsoft Office 2007 Beta has come up with some easier methods to maneuver the security options in its all new swanky interface. It has done away with installing add-ins for purging the documents off any personal information. It now comes with an in-built document inspection utility. Moreover, connecting to shared workspaces has become easier and the ‘Finish’ sub-menu under the Office main menu has almost all of the security options bundled together at one location.

So lets scan through the different security options via Word 2007’s interface in the following screenshots:

1. Properties’ Information can be manually edited before storing or emailing documents

2. Inspect the document for:

Comments, Revisions, Versions and Annotations
Document Properties and Personal Information
Custom XML Data
Headers, Footers and Watermarks
Hidden Text

The ‘Inspect’ option will check for the existence of the checked items and will ask the user if he/she wishes to delete the information, if found. This is a better alternative to the ‘rhd.exe‘ add-in available from Microsoft to remove hidden data.

3. Restrict Permissions for accessing the document

This sub-menu provides three quick options (just like Word 2003) of providing unrestricted access (selected by default) to all users, restrcting access to a set of users (with the help of valid passport IDs) and the last option which also allows changing the ID of the user restricting access.

4. With the introduction of XPS format, and the use of prior versions of MS Office, the developers could not have done away with this feature. Instead of surprising the receiver with an incompatible document, now you can check it yourself.
If the document has elements not compatible with previous versions, the compatibility checker will give a prompt similar to the one below:

5. The last option on the ‘Finish’ sub-menu allows quick finalization of the document. You can mark it ‘Read Only’ before distributing it.

6. The next few security options which are not used as often are clubbed in the ‘Trust Center’ option.
MS Office Main Menu > Word Options > Trust Center. On clicking ‘Trust Center Setting’, you get a range of security settings that can be changed. Trusted publishers, locations, Add-ins, ActiveX Controls, Macro Settings and the Privacy Settings. The Privacy Options used to be on the ‘Security’ tab under the ‘Options’ sub-menu in the previous versions.