Lock a Doc

contributed by Emily Groepper

As students are more routinely completing exams and classroom tasks asynchronously, the security of our documents has become more complicated.  While there is no perfect solution yet, the ability to lockdown a Google doc so that students cannot print or copy the text of the document can provide a modicum of reassurance and security.

In order to lock a document down:

1. Click on the blue “Share” button in the top right corner.  

2. Then click on the small gear in the top right corner of the pop-up.  

**Note: You must be the “Owner” of the document in order for this feature to be available.

3. Uncheck the box next to “Viewers and commenters can see the option to download, print, and copy.”

 

To add an extra level of security, you can also set limits for when the students can have access to that document.

To set the temporary access for a user:

1. Click on the blue “Share” button in the top right corner.

  

2. Type in and select the user’s name or x500.

  

3. Uncheck the “Notify people” option.

  

4. Click on the drop-down menu under “Editor” and select “Viewer.”

  

5. Then click the blue “Share” button.

 

6. Go back into the share settings by clicking the blue “Share” button in the top right corner again.

7. Click on the drop-down menu under “Viewer” next to the name of the person whose access you would like to limit.

 

8. In that drop down menu, select “Give temporary access” and set the end date for the student’s access to expire.

  

**Note: Unfortunately, you will have to do this for each individual student, but after their access expires, students will not be able to see the document any more.

Of course, these measures cannot stop students from using their phones to take a picture of the screen, and students can still use the “print screen” feature to copy the images, but this allows for some increased security of documents.

I recommend using these features in conjunction with Proctorio, set so that students may only open “in-quiz” links.  That way, you lock down the “print screen” feature as well.