I am currently writing a document in word, it will eventually be intended for external companies to whom I will give it in PDF format. While they are trusted partners there is nothing to stop people passing the document on and it getting back to our competition. Full MS secutiry with a server is not appropriate for this as we do not know all of the individuals who it will go to. Also I know there is a Java method to do this but I do not want top go down the road of generating my own application.



As a result of the above I would like to have some form of traceability, specifically I want to be able to add the name of the company we will be giving the document to as a watermark, there are 30 or so companies and I do not want to have to manually create the documents myself. I want to give a tool the list and for it to automatically generate the documents with a different watermark.

Does anyone know of a tool either free or commercial that is able to do this? Any recommendations or ideas would be appreciated.

Regards

Matt

I have the same problem, and must deal with it soon so took the time now to prototype what I had in mind. It will work, I have been testing it manually, and the macro to drive it will be very small.

1. Set the watermarks in the master copy of the Word documents. Use a text box, not a watermark. For the company name, use a custom document property. Rotate, position format as required for the document.

2. The "Get it ready to send out" macro will be a small one.

a. show a file picker for me to choose the documents
b. prompt me for the company name and the destination folder for the PDF files
c. loop for each chosen word doc:

I. open it
II. update the custom document property value with the new co. name
III. update fields
IV. Maybe unlink the {DocProperty} fields but that is probably not necessary
IIII. save as PDF of the same name as the original Word doc
IV. close the Word doc without saving changes

Hope this helps,
jw