How to keep your Excel, Word and Powerpoint Files Private

Sharing excel files is very helpful for organizing data in many instances when you are doing work for your company or even filing your taxes in April. But most of the time this organized data has lots of confidential information. This confidential information could be anything from your Social Security number or even your height, either way this data is given in confidence to a company and they are expected to protect it. Its also important to protect documents you are giving to the a government, lawyer, or accountant that you have personally made. The most important step you can take is keeping excel files private. These steps can also work for Word and and Powerpoint.

Steps to make Excel files Private

1. Open the Excel file you want to set permissions for.
2. Click on the “File” tab in the top-left corner of the Excel window.
3. Select “Protect Workbook” or “Protect Document” from the options.
4. Choose “Encrypt with Password” to require a password to open the file.
5. Enter a strong password and confirm it.
6. Save the file to apply the password protection.
7. Optionally, you can further restrict permissions by using “Restrict Access” or “Protect Sheet” features.

Below is another way to protect your files

1. Click Files Tab
2. Maneuver down to Passwords
3. Set passwords for your file

Encrypt your Files outside the software

---

On Mac

1. In the Finder  on your Mac, open a window, then Control-click the item you want to encrypt in the sidebar.
2. Choose Encrypt [item name] from the shortcut menu.
3. Create a password for the disk and click Encrypt Disk.

For more specific information here is a direct link to Apple (Here)

On Windows

1. Right-click (or press and hold) a file or folder and select Properties.
2. Select the Advanced button and select the Encrypt contents to secure data check box.
3. Select OK to close the Advanced Attributes window, select Apply, and then select OK.

For more specific information here is a direct link to Microsoft (Here)

Another layer of security you can add is protecting your Network security, we have discussed this at length on our blog here is a recent post we’ve made about VPN’s that encrypt your internet traffic (Here).