Putting passwords in Excel, Word, and PowerPoint can help protect your documents with sensitive information from unauthorized people. The process for encrypting these files is simple and can be done, natively, by the document itself. The steps are the same for all three softwares. The tutorial was done in the Microsoft Office 365 suite of Windows 10 and is similar in other versions of Office.
1. Open the Excel, Word or PowerPoint file you want to protect;
2. With the document already open, click “File” and then select “Protect Document” (in Word), or “Protect Workbook” (in Excel), or “Protect Presentation” (in PowerPoint).
3. In the next menu, click the “Encrypt with Password” option;
4. In the window that opens, set a strong password (containing letters, numbers, and/or special characters) for your document. You must enter it again to confirm it.
Attention: keep the created password well, because if it is lost or forgotten, it will not be possible to recover it;
5. After creating the password, save the document, and then close it to validate the changes. If all is correct, upon reopening it, a window will appear asking for the file’s password;
6. Ready! Now your Word, Excel, or PowerPoint document is already password protected to be safely saved or passed on to people you trust.