how to protect word document but allow editing

Select all parts of the document except for the text boxes that you want to lock. Click the drop-down list under Editing Restrictions to display a list of editing types to restrict and select 'No Changes.' This confirms that you want to restrict access to at least some parts of the document.

Under Editing Restrictions, select the “Allow Only This Type of Editing in the Document” check box. Word displays a pane allowing you to manage editing permissions for specific parts of the document, including text boxes.

Click the 'Review' tab, then click the 'Restrict Editing' button in the Protect group.

It seems like this change was only made to docx files, so saving the file as a dotx (word template) works as a temporary solution.Open a Word document that has text boxes.

Filling forms in the documents is also blocked.

The new behaviour was added on a mid December 2022 update for Office.

I've been able to confirm with others that this is not an isolated issue and is the new default behaviour in the most recent word versions.

Word version is Microsoft® Word for Microsoft 365 MSO (version 2211īuild 16.

The files have no read-only or similar file system properties.

The documents are not blocked in the file system because of beingĭownloaded from the internet (they are always created and kept on a.

This is not an issue with protected view.

Already tested it with oldĭocuments that used to work fine, but that now also open with editing

This is not an issue with the documents.

Since a few days ago an Office update seems to have made it so that when you open a file as read only all editing is disabled, and there's a dropdown on the top right of the ribbon, between the share and feedback buttons, that has all the options greyed except for viewing (image 2, except the first two options are disabled).ĭoes anyone know of a way to revert this change and allow temporary editing of read-only files? Since I don't want those changes to be saved, I'm used to opening the files as read-only (image 1) to avoid accidental saves. I need to open those files, make some temporary changes and then print them. I've some documents on a network share that are password protected.

How to protect word document but allow editing