I have a number of workbooks in my organisation that I would like to protect such that users within my company have the ability to change, copy and export the documents.
Currently I have no real restrictions on the documents, providing the above permissions to anyone who can access the documents, which is clearly not ideal or secure.
As such, I have been looking to implement the restricted access features built into excel, however I have hit a number of snags.
The main restriction is I am unable to export/publish the documents as PDF's without removing restrictions. Both the "Publish as PDF or XPS" command and the "Save-As PDF" features don't seem to work on restricted documents. The only workaround I have noticed is using a PDF printer, however this isn't all that practical with the way we use our documents.
Supplementary to the above, providing someone with the "Full Access" status allows them the ability to remove permissions themselves, which limits the security of the document. And the "Change" status is further restrictive as it limits additional features such as the "Change Picture" feature.
Are there any other practical workarounds to the above? The only thing I can think of is creating my own restrictions through macro's (which themselves require passwords to access and change), however this would only be practical in documents that require macro's in order to function.
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