In many cases, the importance that should be given to all the programs focused on the office automation sector is not given. However, as time passes, all the documents and files that we create here gain in importance. This is something that clearly happens in two industry benchmarks such as Microsoft‘s Word and Excel.
The reason for all this that we tell you is quite clear and evident, it is because the data with which we work on our PCs is increasingly personal and sensitive. Both professionally and personally, in the corresponding disk drives, we store information that we do not want under any circumstances to fall into other hands. Hence precisely the security systems that we can use at this time to protect ourselves.
Once we have all this clear, then we are going to focus on a software solution that is widespread throughout the globe, Excel . This is part of Microsoft’s Office suite and focuses on the treatment of numerical data, graphs and formulas. It is not surprising that really important data relating to the accounting of users, small and large companies is integrated here. Hence, it is increasingly necessary to protect the documents or spreadsheets that we create here. Therefore, below, we will see how we can protect the data of the sheets created here in a simple way.
Avoid data modification in Excel
On many occasions it may be the case that the spreadsheets that we make in the Microsoft program are sent or shared with others. However, what we must avoid is that the formulas and data presented here can be modified in a simple way. At this point the best we can do is save the file in formats other than the usual one in this program.
With this, what we want to tell you is that we have the possibility of creating a new PDF that is much more complex to modify and just as effective. In addition, we can do this in very few steps. When saving the project as such from the File menu, we open the drop-down list of supported formats and choose PDF.
Likewise, if we are about to print the document, we can also dump its content, instead of a conventional printer, a file in this Adobe format.
Protect access to the book with a password
Earlier we saw how to prevent other users from modifying the data included in the Excel document. But it is worth mentioning that at the same time we have the possibility that they are not even visible. With this change we comment what we achieve is that, when trying to execute the file, there can be nothing and it asks for a password itself.
Thus, all we have to do here once we have finished the project is to go back to the File menu. Next, we click on the Information option located on the left panel and we will find a button called Protect book . This will give us way to a series of protection functions among which we can choose to Encrypt with password.
Therefore, the person who wants to access that spreadsheet will have to have the corresponding password that we have established. In the same way, here we will see that we can add other security elements such as a digital signature or a watermark. These will also be useful in certain circumstances, especially in more professional environments.