Protect Powerpoint show from being changed/edited

[Pinotage]

I have a Pointpoint presentation that I have to loan to another company, and I want to protect it so they cannot change it in anyway, just use it as is.

How can I protect it?

[Buenchico]

The simple answer is: You can't.

Technically, all you can do is to make sure that you get your file back, the way it left you, by write-protecting it. (Right-click the file. Click 'properties'. Check 'Read only'. Click 'Apply'. Click 'OK').

There's no technical way you can prevent the company from opening the file, editing it and then re-saving it. All you can do is to ensure that your opening slide includes a copyright notice, e.g. "P. Grape assserts his ownership of the intellectual property rights associated with this presentation. Unauthorised copying or editing of this material is prohibited. Permission to use this presentation is granted solely upon the condition that the whole of the presentation is shown in its existing format without additions, deletions or other changes".

Your rights in the presentation still exist without the copyright notice. All the notice does is to make it clear that you take such things seriously.

Chris

[vehelpfulguy]

Why not convert it to a PDF then give it to them ?

[fo3nix]

actually, you can.

but not with powerpoint, to my knowledge.

download the excellent and free OpenOffice 2:
http://www.openoffice.org

It comes with replacements for all the major Microsoft Office components (free, as in RMS free), and can open and save files as their proptietary Microsoft Office counterparts.

One useful program is Impress, the powerpoint replacement. a great feature of this is the ability to export your presentation as a flash file (not as easy to edit), but which is still just as interactive.

try it!

[Pinotage]

Thanks all - I'm going to make a PDF file of it.

[ahmettokay47]

what is 80048820 numbers of error code?

[fo3nix]

as far as I know though, PDF files aren't exactly interactive. depends on your slideshow of course.

[Trumpster]

Hi. I have a similar problem however my presentation is reliant upon vba code. Not something that will work as a PDF or in flash I suspect. Does any know if there are any other programs other than powerpoint that can be used for presenations that will provide some level of security to the program content?

[Serenity101]

You can use this utility here called Powerguard:

http://www.moonlight-software.com/powerguard.htm

Works perfectly.

[akav]

If you want a pro solution, then this powerpoint compiler works really well http://www.altavente.com but beware, its a big beast!

Whats cool is nothing gets extracted to disk ... so nobody can steal your content!

akav