hi this is gary with macmost.com today
let me show you how to password protect
and encrypt
documents
[Music]
macmost is brought to you thanks to a
great group of more than 900 supporters
go to macmost.com patreon there you can
read more about the patreon campaign
join us and get exclusive content and
course discounts
so i'm often asked how you can password
protect a document on your mac
so i'm going to show you a few methods
but first let me tell you why it's
probably not necessary
everybody that uses a mac should have
their own user account
and should have a password protected you
should be the only one that has the
password to your account
now as long as you have that set up and
you don't leave it unlocked lying around
for other people to access
then all of your files are really
password protected nobody can get into
your account so nobody can see
any of your files and if you have
filevault turned on
then everything's encrypted so even if
somebody steals your computer
they still can't get into those files no
matter what they do so in most cases
when people ask me about password
protecting or encrypting
a document it's really not necessary but
there are a few situations that do
occasionally come up
for instance you may not own your mac it
may be a company mac
other people may actually have access to
it you may want to protect a file
from anybody else that wants to look for
instance you may store a file with some
notes
for a future job search and you want to
make sure that your boss can't see that
sometimes we also put files in public
places like you may have a company
or school web server where you can put a
file and it's kind of
out of your control maybe other people
can easily see it or maybe it's a little
more difficult but you want to make sure
that if somebody does have access to it
they can't open it without a password
another reason you may want a password
protected document is when sending it to
somebody else
over email email technically really
isn't that secure so if you have to send
something
that's very sensitive you may want to
password protect the document
of course in that case you don't want to
include the password in the email that
also has the document as an attachment
so you want to talk to the person on the
phone or maybe send them a message
some other way with the password another
reason is you may want to give a
document to somebody
but not let them have access to it right
away in other words give somebody a
document with emergency instructions
but only given the password if that
emergency occurs or maybe give students
a quiz and then another document with
the answers but don't give them
the password to the answers right away
and then of course there are those
people that just want to have
a double layer of security they just
will sleep a little bit better at night
knowing that some sensitive information
is not
only stored behind a password wall in
their account
but also somebody needs a different
password to actually open that document
all right so how do you password protect
a document well let's start with pages
numbers and
keynote the primary document creation
apps on your mac
it's really easy to do this in these
apps so
here i've got a pages document and if i
go to file
there's set password i just use that
and set a password you can put a
password hint for yourself if you want
and you can also say remember this
password in my keychain meaning that the
document can be easily opened up
on your mac but if you put it somewhere
else or share it with somebody else
they're not going to have access to your
keychain so they'll need a password this
is a great option because
it means you're not really
inconvenienced by the password but other
people need it to get access to the
document
in other locations and then when you set
the password
now if you close the document and then
try to open it again
it asks for the password
and now the document's open and you can
use it as a normal document until you
close it again
once a password is set you can go back
here and it's change password now
and you have to enter the old password
and then a new password and
verify or you can use this button here
to remove the password so you can
temporarily password protect a document
and then remove the password later
now in numbers in keynote they work the
same way go to file and you have set
password
and it's exactly the same options and
here it is in keynote
now other apps may or may not offer this
option and
may put it in a different place so for
instance microsoft word certainly does
offer this
you have to go to tools and then down
here you've got protect document
but that's not the only way to password
protect a document you can also create
a pdf from just about any app and assign
a password to it
so you can put some sensitive
information say in a pages document that
you have
create a pdf and the pdf requires a
password
and that's the one that you share with
somebody else over email
or on a shared server something like
that
so here in pages if i want to produce a
pdf i could do it one of two ways
one is i could go to file export to
pdf and then in here i can
select require password open here i can
set a password verify it
and include a hint and then i'll save
the pdf so i'll save this here to the
desktop
and now you can even see the pdf has a
little lock there
it of course won't show you a preview of
what's in the pdf
in the icon because it's password
protected if i try to open it up it
tries to open it in preview
and it prompts me to enter the password
first before i get access to the
information
now the other way to create a pdf in
pages in just about any app
is to go to file and then print as long
as you can print you can usually get to
a pdf menu here
and you could save as pdf one of the
options you've got
then is security options here click that
and you can require a password to open
the document you could also require the
password to copy text
and to print now what's great about that
is you could take apps that don't have
any password protection option
and still create password protected pdfs
from them
so for instance text edit i could go in
here and say
print i could go to pdf save as pdf
and i've got those same security options
here
you can do that from anything so for
instance you could be on a private web
server that people normally don't have
access to
and if you want to share some
information there you could go
and print the web page that you're
looking at and then
choose save as pdf and then assign
a password to that pdf so now you can
share it to somebody else who may not
have access to that website but they
still need a password
just to see the information in the pdf
now one other note there is a difference
between password protecting a document
and encrypting it
but not in this case in this case
everything i'm showing you
actually encrypts a document password
protection without encryption really
isn't worth anything
if somebody could actually look at the
bits in the file and see what's in there
then the password protection isn't any
kind of real security
so when you password protected document
in pages numbers
keynote word or you password protect a
pdf you're actually
encrypting it and adding a password
that's the key
to decrypting it the differences between
password protecting a document
like pages numbers keynote or word and
password protecting a pdf
is pdf by its nature is kind of the
finished document
you're not going to be editing a pdf
whereas you will be editing those other
file types so if it's something you need
to
update all the time or collaborate with
somebody else on
then you want to password protect the
actual document
so that you can continue to work on it
and update it but if it's
a document with finished information
then create a password protected pdf
if you like this video click the thumbs
up button below to let me know
i published new tutorials each weekday
hit the subscribe button so you don't
miss out