Digitally sign OpenOffice.org documents

OpenOffice 2.0 or higher allows you to digitally sign documents using certificates. While obtaining a certificate is a quite complicated and expensive procedure, you can easily create a so-called self-signed certificate and use it to sign your documents. Both Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft Office include tools for generating self-signed certificates, but if you only want to create a certificate for personal use, you can do this using the free and easy-to-use utility SELFCERT from Abylonsoft.

Figure 1: Creating a self-signed certificate

To create a self-signed certificate in Abylon SELFCERT, launch the program, fill out the fields, press the Create button, and save the file. Confirm that you want to import the certificate into Windows’ certificate database, and follow the instructions provided by the Certificate Import wizard. If you choose not to import the certificate, you can do this later by double-clicking on it. To sign the current Writer document using the created certificate, choose File → Digital Signatures, press the Add button, select your certificate, and press OK to close the dialogues and sign the document.

Figure 2: The Seal icon indicates that the document is signed

The tiny Seal icon in the Status bar indicates that the document has now been digitally signed. The digital signature ensures the authenticity of the document, among other things. In other words, the Seal icon indicates that the document has not been altered in any way. Other users can view the certificate by double-clicking on the Seal icon and pressing the View Certificate button. If they try to edit the document, the Seal icon disappears, which can give you and other users a clue that the document is no longer authentic. To remove the certificate from your computer, choose Run from the Start menu, and run the certmgr.msc command. Select the Personal folder, mark the certificate you want to remove and press the Delete button.