Today we are going to see how to lock and protect a PowerPoint presentation from being modified. In this way, nobody will be able to edit your presentation and it will be safe from anyone who wants to modify it. PowerPoint has many interesting options, even converting a presentation to Word.
But today, we are going to see a way to lock and protect a PowerPoint file so that no one can modify it in any way. In this way, we can create presentations and be totally sure that nobody will take advantage of our work in any way possible.
How to lock a PowerPoint presentation
In order to protect a PowerPoint presentation and in this way prevent anyone from modifying it, what we must do is the following:
We are going to click on the ” Office ” button and then choose the option “Prepare” and “Mark as final”.
Keep in mind that by putting ” Mark as final” we are communicating to PowerPoint that our presentation is finished and that we do not have to continue editing anything.
What this does is disable the ability to edit the presentation and any writing command.
You must bear in mind that once the presentation is marked as final, it will only be accessible in reading mode. Which means that it cannot be edited.
A recommendation would be that you save a backup copy of that file before marking it as final in a private Google Drive folder, for example.
¿ How to create the backup? You will only have to select the file from Windows Explorer. Right-click and choose ” Copy ” and then right-click on a blank space and choose ” Paste ” so an exact file copy is generated.
You can also do this by selecting the file with the left click. Pressing “Ctrl + C” and then ” Ctrl + V ” which would be the combinations or shortcuts on the Windows keyboard to copy and paste respectively.
How to protect a PowerPoint presentation
Another way to protect or lock a presentation is by right-clicking on the PowerPoint file in Windows Explorer. After this, you will have to choose the ” Properties ” option and finally check the “Read-only” box.
The only problem with this method is that anyone who can do what I mentioned above can uncheck that box. So possibly not one of the safest.
How to password protect PowerPoint presentation
You can also encrypt the file by entering a password so that no one who does not have it can view the presentation.
To do this, simply click on the ” Office ” button then go to “Prepare” and here select ” Encrypt document. ” In this section, it will ask you to enter a password. Obviously, you should not forget it, since, if you do, you will not be able to access the file again. So the best thing is that you try to create a secure and easy to remember password.
But as you can see there are several ways to lock or protect a PowerPoint presentation so that no one can modify or edit it in any way. All the methods that we mentioned are extremely simple and should not take you long to implement.
If you still have any questions about how to protect a PowerPoint presentation, you can leave it a little further down in the comment box.