How to lock your PowerPoint presentation from editing – the whole thing or just part of it.
This is to complete our look at the locking/read only options in Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and now PowerPoint.
Read only x 2
There’s two ways to make a PowerPoint presentation ‘Read only’ – meaning that it can’t be edited, only viewed.
Windows
Any file can be marked as ‘Read only’ at the system level. This means the file can be opened and viewed but no changes can be made to the file.
To do that, close the document in Office. In Windows Explorer, right-click on the file, choose Properties | General and check the ‘Read-only’ box.
If you open a ‘Read only’ document in Office, you can make changes but if you try to save you’ll be presented with a Save As dialog to save under a different name. In the title bar you’ll see “(Read-Only)” after the document name.
This applies to any file and any program in Windows but use with care because the ‘read only’ setting can break programs if used on the wrong file.
Save As options
If you want people to view the presentation but not edit it, consider ‘Save As’ to another format, most likely PDF.
Inside PowerPoint
Compared to Word or Excel, the PowerPoint protection are minimal. If you were hoping for the ability to make some slides ‘read only’ leaving others editable, you’re out of luck. There’s certainly no option to lock parts of a slide.
The only PowerPoint protection options are at File | Info and they won’t detain you long.
Mark as Final – is similar to the same option in Word.
The presentation is only marked as final with a notice to anyone who opens it:
Just click ‘Edit anyway’ to edit the presentation. So this option is advisory only with no way to enforce it.
Encrypt with Password – this requires a password to open the presentation at all.
That’s it for PowerPoint.
