Encrypt PARTS of (but not all of) a Microsoft WORD Document.

[Starfishjoe]

We have several documents at work written in MSWord and stored on a network
server. Supposedly, the folder containing these documents is restricted
only to our department as it should be. However, Auditors have discovered
elements in each of these documents that need to be restricted only to
certain priviledged supervisors. The nature of the data to be concealed is
login, UserID, and Password Information to business partners remote servers.
Rather than rewrite our many documents to replace this info with a reference
to a not yet created tablecontaining a compiled list of this info, Which
would be an annoyong time consuming chore for me, I am wondering if there is
a feature within WORD itself that would encrypt specific fields on a word
document, but leave everything else visible. I have read of Encryption
software that will do this for some database applications--encrypting
certain fields and requiring a password to decript, but not affect the rest
of the data record.

Is there such a thing for WORD? Can it be created with VBScript or VBA?

 

[Jay Freedman]

I can answer the first part of your question -- no, Word doesn't have
any built-in method of encrypting parts of a file. It does have a
feature for encrypting the entire document on save (in the Save As
dialog, click the Tools button, choose Save Options, and click the
Advanced button to choose a secure encryption method; the default
method is _not_ secure).

I suppose it might be possible to write a VBA macro that calls into
the Windows Encryption Service to encrypt individual ranges, but I
don't have any experience with that. I will say that security and
encryption are not good topics for do-it-yourself or on-the-job
training; hire somebody who knows what they're doing. Otherwise all
you have is a false sense of security.