How do you unprotect a Word document when you don't know the password?

<sigh> (she's so very good at this...)
:)

Awesome.
Thanks!!

You're welcome.


(Hello, Sir! Thanks!)

I'm in the presence of genius - and you're thanking ME?  :D LOL
Take care Dreamboat...

downngrade to word95 (does not support password protection) and works as it was not protected at all ;)
BRGDS

Does the last comment mean that if I have MS Word 2002 with Office XP I should do a '"save as" in Word 4.0 and the password goes away?  Thanks!

If you're using Windows 2000 or XP, you can right-click on the document in "Windows Explorer" and choose "Open With", and a list of optional programs should appear; from this list; choose "Wordpad" and the document will open in the program "wordpad.exe".
Optionally, you can click on "Start" -> "Run", and type "wordpad.exe"; then navigate to the location of your ".doc" file.
"wordpad.exe" should be located in C:\WINNT\system32\dllcache, but the "right-click" procedure is much easier.

I hope this helps for your particular OS.

re:comment to bluelgt
"Does the last comment mean that if I have MS Word 2002 with Office XP I should do a '"save as" in Word 4.0 and the password goes away?  Thanks!"
   Just open it in Word 4.0-it does not support encryption or password protection(as per Microsoft)
 

The only problem with saving in a lower format is just that... formatting issues but if it is just a word document without formatting it would work quite well.

~Nathan

Copy and past into a new file works also in PW protected Excel spreadsheets. You lose the field formulas though.

If you are using office XP or 2003, you can change the view to HTML-Code using menues: [Extra] [Macro] [Microsoft Script-Edotor] ([Alt]+[Shift]+[F11]).

Search for "Password" and you will find somethimg like this:
  <w:DocumentProtection>ReadOnly</w:DocumentProtection>
  <w:UnprotectPassword>19E8E61E</w:UnprotectPassword>

To remove the protection:
  -Just remowe those two lines, and after saving the document , the protection is gone.

To remove the password:
  -replace the Password, here "19E8E61E", with "00000000", save the Document and close "Script-Editor".

Alternative you can save your document as .html and use a html-Editor.
:-) Rene

I easily unprotected government documents by viewing the document information, including the typists' name & bosses names. Then I tried variations on the people's names, beginning with the typist, who was Christina. "Chris" was the password. Most people are not very creative with passwords, in fact the two most common are "secret" and "password."

Do you have Adobe Reader, try printing it to adobe distiller, then it saves formats, and you can edit it.

nosnhojnod

This solution (see underneath) does not work on my Laptop running Window2000,  I get messages about files access.

If you're using Windows 2000 or XP, you can right-click on the document in "Windows Explorer" and choose "Open With", and a list of optional programs should appear; from this list; choose "Wordpad" and the document will open in the program "wordpad.exe".
Optionally, you can click on "Start" -> "Run", and type "wordpad.exe"; then navigate to the location of your ".doc" file.
"wordpad.exe" should be located in C:\WINNT\system32\dllcache, but the "right-click" procedure is much easier.

I hope this helps for your particular OS.
 
Comment from daredevil_yu
Date: 04/13/2004 12:46AM PDT
 Comment

quote
" If it's Tools-Protect Document protected, then just open a blank file, hit File-Insert, and choose the protected doc.

No more doc protection. :)  "    



Dreamboat !

god bless you!

I feel so dumb now....
It was so easy!!!

Hi,
I recently had a HD crash in an XP system. I had some Word (office 10.x) documents that were created using MS WORD 2002 and some .RTF documents that i had created using Wordpad. I had an computer shop extract this files from my HD. The file size/name looks the same as it was before the crash. the shop gave me copy of recovered files on CD.
I copied these files to another xp-computer. When i open this file using MS word 2002 all it displays is a bunch of graphic character that looks like vertical rectangles !!!! what is going on ?? also, on some of the file i get error, " do not have permission to open the file". Please HELP!!!

Ask your question new, boby. You shouldn't ask in a question that's already closed.

Mangaard YOU'R THE MAN
THANKS A LOT
I HAVE THE SAME PROBLEM AND I FIX IT WHIT THE HTML ADVICE
REGARDS
EDO

Hi Mangaard, thanks so much... Your solution is marvellous...

Who knew!  LOL   Thanks!