If your document is sensitive, you may want to limit who accesses it. Luckily, Word allows you to set passwords on your documents. To do so, open the document you want to password-protect. Then, click the Tools menu and click Options. Next, click the Security tab. You’ll see that in here, we have the option to set a password for opening the document, modifying the document, or both.

 

To set a password, just type it in the appropriate box: Password to open or Password to modify. (For Password to open, you can click the Advanced button to choose an encryption type.) Once you click OK, you will be asked to confirm the password you have entered. Make sure you pick a password that you can remember; if you lose or forget your password you won’t be able to open or modify your document!

 

Once you have set a password, here’s what will happen, depending on the options you have chosen:

 

Password to open	Will be prompted to enter a password as soon as document is opened. If correct password is opened, from then on the user will be able to work with the document normally.
Password to modify	Will be prompted to enter a password as soon as document is opened. If they have the password, they will be allowed to open the document and work with it as normal. If they do not have the password, they can click Read-Only to open the document, but they will not be able to save changes to the existing file. They WILL be able to save the file with a different name and/or to another location.
Password to open and to modify	Will be prompted to enter a password as soon as the document is opened. (If they do not have the password, they will not be able to open the document.) Once this password is entered, they will be then prompted for the modify password. The user can enter the password and click OK to have full access, or click Read-Only to open the document but not be able to modify it.

 

 

To remove the password from the document, open it with full permissions. Then, click the Tools menu and click Options. Click the Security tab and delete the text in the password field you want to remove (it will appear as dots). Click Apply, click OK, and close and re-open Word. That’s it!