CD-Menu Creator: How to protect a document with a password

If you have documents (for example PDF or Word documents) that you want to distribute to other people via a CD, DVD or USB flash drive, CD-Menu Creator is the right tool for you. You can create a menu interface very fast and you can have clickable buttons that the end-user click on to open your documents.

Password protected documentIf you have sensitive documents that you only want some specific persons open and read, you can password protect the access to the documents. You can also have the documents encrypted on the CD, DVD or USB flash drive, so nobody can read them directly on the disc or drive. And if any person copies the documents from the disc / drive to another place, they are unreadable. The documents can only be read via the menu interface and by entering the correct password. The menu interface will ask for a password when the end-user clicks on the button that opens the document.

Tip: How to password protect a document
The tip below explains how to password protect a document that is opened via a button in a menu interface that is created with CD-Menu Creator. The document will also be stored encrypted on the disc or drive, and can only be read via the menu interface.

1. Start CD-Menu Creator.

2. Open the Buttons (text) tab in the editor.

3. Click the Add Button button.

4. Enter a button text at Text (button).

5. Select the Show Document command in the Command combobox.

6. Click the “…” button and choose a document (for example a PDF document).

7. Click the Options button in the dialog box.

8. Open the Password tab.

9. Select the Password protect this button option.

10. Enter a password in the Password input box.

11. Select the Encrypt the file linked to the button option.

The 'Password' tab in the 'Button Options' dialog box

12. Click OK. And thereafter OK again.

13. Now create your menu!

After you have created your menu you can click on the button in the menu interface. A dialog box that asks for a password is now shown. Now enter the password that you entered at step 10 above to open the document. If you enter another text, the document can not be opened.

How to increase the security even more
The password and encryption function protects the document, so nobody can open it without the password. But if you also want to assure that nobody can save or print the document via the document viewer that is used to show the document, you must disable these functions in the document viewer or choose a document viewer that does not have this functionality. You can read the documentation to your document viewer/editor to find more information about this.

If you distribute a document viewer with your CD, DVD or USB flash drive, you can choose the Run Program command at step 5 above and enter the path to the document viewer in the Filename text box and a path to the document file in the Parameters input box. If needed, you can also enter some switches to the document viewer program in this input box.

Some document viewers have built-in encryption/decryption
Instead of using the encryption/decryption function in CD-Menu Creator, you can also use a document viewer that supports encryption and decryption. To have maximum security, this may be a better choice because they are specialized tools, and as a such, the security may be better.

See also
> CD-Menu Creator: How to encrypt a document without a password

CD-Menu Creator: How to encrypt a document without a password

In this blog post we explained how to protect a document with a password and how to store it encrypted on a CD, DVD or USB flash drive. Sometimes it may be useful to only have the document encrypted, but without requiring (asking for) a password. This is also possible with CD-Menu Creator.

If you follow the tip in the How to protect a document with a password blog post, but enters a hyphen (“-“) instead of a password at step 10 in the tip, the document will not be password protected; it will only be encrypted.

The 'Password' tab in the 'Button Options' dialog box

Copy protection
One benefit when doing this is that you will have a limited copy protection of your document. Nobody can copy the document directly from the CD, DVD or USB flash drive to another drive or disc, and have it opened. It can only be opened via CD-Menu Creator’s menu interface. If somebody tries to open the document in other way, it will not be opened because the contents is encrypted and will be unreadable for the document viewer or editor.

See also
> CD-Menu Creator: How to protect a document with a password