Here’s a brief tutorial that will show you how to password-protect your documents when using LibreOffice. Remember LibreOffice works in Windows, Mac OS X and Linux systems, including Ubuntu. When you password-protect a document, anyone without the correct password will not be able to open, read or modify it. It’s a beautiful way to make sure no one access your documents without authorization.

LibreOffice is a open source productivity suite that’s comparable to Microsoft Office Suite. It does almost everything Office does and in some areas, does it better. Although M$ Office is the favorite, LibreOffice is gaining fans and doing it quickly especially in the open source community.

If you’re currently using LibreOffice want to learn how to save file securely with passwords, continue below to learn how. Password protecting a document restricts who can open, read or edit it. Anyone who tries to open it without the proper credential will be denied access. However, because LibreOffice uses a very strong encryption algorithm that makes it almost impossible to bypass, losing or forgetting your password will also deny you access to it.

You can only change your password while the document is opened. If you can’t open it with the correct password, you’ll probably never be able to open that document again. To change your password, click on File –> Properties –> General, then on the menu bar, click the Change Password button in the dialog box.

To get started with protecting your documents, open or create a new document then go to File –> Save. On the Save dialog box, check the box at the bottom left to Save with password.

 

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Next, type and confirm the password that will open the document. When you’re done, click OK.

 

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Make sure to remember the password as it will be highly impossible to open the document without the correct password. If you even to open with M$ Word, you’ll get the error message below.

 

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So, that’s how to protect documents using LibreOffice. If you want the file to be read-only, click ‘More Option’ and create a second password that will allow the file to be changed or modified by users with the correct second password.

 

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To edit a document, right click the content and select Edit, then type the editable password.

 

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Enjoy!