Do you have information in a Word document that you don’t want anyone else to see? Here’s how to put a password on it.

Some of my clients store all of their account passwords in a Word document. Some people use a Word doc to keep track of their medical information, or perhaps their bank account details. If you have private information of any kind in a Word document, it might be a good idea to add a password to that document so that it doesn’t get seen by anyone else.

And it turns out, adding a password to a Word file is pretty easy:

Open the document, then click File:

Next, in the left column, click on Info. Then, under “Protect Document” click the drop-down menu and choose “Encrypt with Password”:

Now you are presented with a window to enter the password you want to use for this file:

You enter the password, then it will prompt you to enter it again to confirm. Then you just Save the document and close it.

Now you can test it – double click to open that file, and it should prompt you for the password.

If you want to remove the password, use the same process as above, but leave the password field blank, then save the document again.

Keep in mind – this level of protection is not all that strong. Someone with a reasonable level of expertise could most likely get past that password protection. But for a lot of people, this simple password protection is sufficient.