TIP - Lock headers and footers from editing

[Rudi]

Hi,

Here is a great tip to apply to letterheads. If (for example) you have a company name and logo in a header, and address details or managers (owner) details in the footer, you can LOCK these from being edited. As a matter of fact, this tip applies protection to sections in a document, so it can be modified to protect anything within that section, incl. tables, pictures and other floating content.

Steps to lock data:

1. Open the Word document that contains the header and the footer that you want to protect from changes. Do not open the header or the footer of the document.
2. Make sure that you are at the top of your Word document. To do this, press CTRL+HOME.
3. On the Page Layout ribbon, click Breaks.
4. In the Breaks menu, click Continuous under Section breaks, and then click OK.
5. A continuous section break is inserted at the top of your document.
6. On the Review ribbon, click Restrict Editing.
7. In the Restrict Editing task pane, click to select the Allow only this type of editing in the document check box, and then change the box to Filling in forms.
8. Click Select sections.
9. In the Selection Protection dialog box, click to clear the Section 2 check box, and then click OK.
10. Under Start enforcement, click Yes, Start Enforcing Protection.
11. Assign a password and OK

[HansV]

Thanks, Rudi.

A few remarks:

• Some features of Word are disabled in a document protected for forms, even in sections that have been unprotected. For example, it is not possible to insert shapes, bookmarks, cross references, text boxes, WordArt, footnotes/endnotes, a table of contents or an index. And you can't turn track changes on (or off, if it was already off before you protected the document).
• Although it's not possible to edit the header or footer, it is still possible to remove it:
  
  S172.png

[Rudi]

Thanks for those remarks.

I can understand point one which makes sense with protection active, but point two does not make sense in this context? I wonder what the reason is behind the ability to remove the header even though its protected?

[HansV]

It looks like a bug to me - I don't think Microsoft intended this...

[Rudi]

I tested it in Word 2013 too. One can still delete the header and footer here too.

SP2-Thu,8-8.png

[Jay Freedman]

Forget about the section break, and use the "No changes (read only)" protection type instead of "Filling in forms". Select the body of the document and check the "Everyone" box in the restriction pane, and start protection.

This has at least two advantages: It doesn't disable a lot of features the way Forms protection does, and the header can't be deleted -- the command is still there, but it doesn't do anything when you click it.

Another advantage, IMHO, is that you don't have a useless Section 1 that might cause other problems.

[Rudi]

Excellent. TX Jay.

If one does want to protect a table in the middle of the document from edit/delete, I'm assuming that you will then need to use the sections method. Or is there a secret around that one too?

[Jay Freedman]

Rudi, the same "No changes" protection will still work. You just have to mark all of the pieces of the document that you want people to be able to edit, while leaving the other parts unmarked.

Let's say you already have the body of a document marked as editable by "Everyone", and only the header is not editable. Then you create a table in the middle of the body, and you want it to be protected. Use these steps:

• Open the Restrict Editing pane and stop protection.
• Clear the "Everyone" check box.
• Select just the part of the document body before the table, and check "Everyone".
• Select just the part of the document body after the table, and check "Everyone".
• Start protection.

When the Restrict Editing pane is open, you can now click the Show All Regions I Can Edit button, and it will show that everything except the header and the table is editable.

[Rudi]

So its as flexible as that. My goodness...its great....similar to locking cells in Excel before protecting the sheet.
TX Jay. This will help to avoid the limits of the previous method.

Cheers.