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I need to prevent a document from being saved / saved as (say from ms word). I've looked around and I havn't quite found a satifying answer. I've considered EFS... but I don't think it prevents the user from saving the document as... (though it prevents access to the original source file). Any ideas outthere?

Lars Truijens
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user38734
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  • I'm curious, what use would disabling the Save As function be? I'm just bewildered as to what it would be needed for. – Peter C. Nov 18 '08 at 23:55
  • I have a secure document (through efs or like system) and I do not want to allow the user to unencrypt the file and save it off. – user38734 Nov 19 '08 at 00:44
  • I'm not worried so much as opening / saving from a different machine per say. EFS would basically prevent them from opening (since they would not have the key to decrypt). I was more concerned with the ability to tell word (or that matter any application) not to allow save/save as functionality – user38734 Nov 19 '08 at 00:45

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Run it on completely locked-down system with read-only disk, no network and no removable drives. Access to the computer must be phisically restricted as well.

This should prevent Save As from working, but still won't prevent document from being copied (someone may take photo of the screen and OCR it).

Kornel
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It usually isn't worth it to disable Save As, because you need access to the original in order to open it in the first place. There are always ways to copy a file.

I had the same issue come up when someone asked me to disable Save As for a PDF.

Mark Ransom
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  • The problem is not the copy (EFS renders it moot)... its the ability to unecrypt... and then save off the document. – user38734 Nov 19 '08 at 00:47
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There is no way take an arbitrary document and modify it in such a way that it cannot be saved. You could modify a program such as Word not to allow Save or Save As but that would still allow someone to open and save the document with a different program or on a different machine.

jdigital
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