When submitting a report or finalizing a report, if you don’t like the option of creating a *.pdf file with it, you can publish it as a read-only document.
I want to make a note here that one should make sure this isn’t their only copy of the file, for once it’s read only, it’s a pain to get it out of read only.
The process to make it read only is fairly simple, from inside the open document:
- Click on the image as shown above (top left corner of your office product) and go to prepare
- Click on mark as final
This should have your copy marked now as read only, and at the bottom of your document window it is locked and will give an error if editing is attempted.
There are other methods of finalizing a document that don’t involve this, like password protecting, which I won’t discuss here, but they are valid options which can be learned about at the Microsoft Office help documentation website.