stoyleg Posted September 3, 2015 Share Posted September 3, 2015 Is it possible to protect/encrypt Word documents (ie. make them read-only) that reside on a server using PHP, so that when a user downloads them they can't edit them? You can do it with this but I'm looking for a free solution if that's possible? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ginerjm Posted September 3, 2015 Share Posted September 3, 2015 Do these docs have to be Word docs when you place them on the server? Why not convert them to PDF format and then nobody can alter your source (Word) doc? Not sure but the PDF format may itself have a RO option so that no software can modify them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stoyleg Posted September 3, 2015 Author Share Posted September 3, 2015 Thanks for the reply. At the moment I have a system which dynamically writes values into Word docs via a web form, after which the user downloads the document. I could actually re-write it so it writes to a PDF instead, but trying to avoid this as it will take time...although it's looking like it may be the only way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ginerjm Posted September 3, 2015 Share Posted September 3, 2015 Creating a pdf is not that hard. Try FPDF - pretty easy to learn and powerful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gizmola Posted September 3, 2015 Share Posted September 3, 2015 Anything you do of this nature is going to be proprietary and ultimately unreliable. You can not "give" a digital asset of any kind to someone and also make it non-editable. If people really want to edit something, they will find a way. Just pointing that out---- With that said, I agree that for dissemination of documents, PDF's are a much better solution than word documents, which require the user to have a compatible version of office. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stoyleg Posted September 3, 2015 Author Share Posted September 3, 2015 Thanks to all for the advice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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