If you want to send or receive Word files or Excel sheets via email with a bit of additional security, you might consider password-protecting them first.
If you do this you might find that your email doesn’t get sent. This is because the industry standard software that we run to protect all of our customers can see these encrypted files as potentially malicious, and blocks them from being sent (or received). So how can you get get around this?
Before offering solutions, it is worth considering just what level of additional security is being achieved with this password protection. Your email messages are already fully encrypted when they are sent from your PC, so as long as you have the correct recipient address the protection is already not bad. And while the security offered by password protection might keep curious eyes out of your documents, anyone with serious bad intentions and equipped with the right tools will be able to crack into your files fairly quickly.
So, with that in mind, you still want to lock a file with a password before you send it. If so, the way to do it is to first convert your file to a PDF. You can usually do this right from the application you use to create and edit the source document. Once you have a PDF file, you can add a password using the excellent Preview application (if you run a Mac). For Windows users there’s the decent and free PDFEncrypt tool (download from https://pdfencrypt.net). Alternatively, regardless of the platform you use Adobe provides a free online service here. You should then be able to send your password protected PDF without any problem.
Of course, having solved that part, you then need to work out how to open password-protected PDFs sent to you. The simplest options seem to be to use your web browser. We’ve tested Firefox, Chrome and Safari so far, and they all work well, asking for the password and then opening the file in a browser window for you. Mac users can also avail themselves of Preview. There’s no such PDF editor bundled with Windows that we’re aware of, but along with the browser options mentioned above there is a solid choice of capable PDF editing software available these days beyond the rather costly Adobe Acrobat.
Of course, you only need to be concerned about this if you want to send or receive password protected Office docs via email. Normal, unprotected files will be sent and received without hindrance.