Hyperandy's Blog

I recently got a document that the user was unable to spell check when adding to a form due to the document being protected, so in order to give them that feature I had to disable protection. I am sure there are other people out there with this issue as well. I am using Windows XP with Office 2007 and the file was a *.doc NOT the new *.docx format (although it maybe the same).  Also this should work well with older versions of office, but your milage may vary.

Here is the way I disabled protection in the document:

1) Verify the document is locked, when on the “Home” tab of the ribbon to the far right “Find, Replace, and Select” were all greyed out and when I clicked on the “Review” Tab and then clicked “Protect Document”, clicking “Stop Protection” prompted me for a password

2)  In order to preserve the formatting of the document, after a few test I found you need to save the document as a Word 2003 XML Document. To do this click on the MS Office button on the upper left hand corner (forgive me if that’s not the right term as I don’t used MS Office), click on “Save As…” and in the lower box that says, “Save as type:” select Word 2003 XML Document and click ok. test your newly created document by opening it back up in Office 2007 and check that the formatting has not been touched, it should look the same.

3) Open the Document in Notepad, you can do this by locating the document and right click on it and choose “Open With…” then click on “Choose Program…” find and select Notepad and click ok.

4) In Notepad click “Edit” and “Find…” (or crtl+f) and type enforcement or password both will bring you to the correct location. Once found change the enforcement=”on” to enforcement=”off”

*(this worked for me but it is possible yours might be protected differently and it looks as if you can remove (<w:documentProtection w:edit=”forms” w:enforcement=”on” w:unprotectPassword=”DA0FC87B”/>) in it’s entirety and get the same outcome)*

5) reopen the xml file you edited into Word 2007 and just resave it as a word 97-2003 Document (or the *.doc) format so anyone can open it again like a normal document.

Again, Your milage may vary, if you don’t need to worry too much about forms, check boxes and formatting, during testing I found that opening it in Open Office, saving it as an *.odt and then back to a *.doc uprotected the document I was working on. F.Y.I. I have used a simalr process for PDF’s, opening the pdf in evince (the linux pdf viewer) and printing back to a pdf resulted in an unlocked pdf…just a quick tip for you guys out there.

YOU MUST REENABLE PROTECTION FOR PROPER OPERATION! see below…

Addition: Check boxes don’t work as they did, I am currently trying to figure out a quick fix, but as of this writing to change the checkbox field you must double click the check box and click checked or not checked on the document I am working on, looks like a macro change, I will post my findings…  Got it! Just reprotect the Document (kind of a pain) it appears that inorder for the form to operate correctly (check boxes and fields) you must reenable the protection. I used my own super strict password of 0000 for this, you can use anything. To reenable the protection in Office 2007 from the Home ribbon, select the “Review” tab and on the far right you should see “Protect Document” Click it and then on the right side under the Protect Button you will see a window titled “Restrict formatting and editing” Where it says “Allow only this type of editing in the document:” I selected “Filling in forms” then Click “Yes, Start Enforcing Protection” enter your new password twice and click ok. Done. Use this same password to disable the protection in the future…easy peasy….

***New during testing I found you can also do this by saving the document as “Rich Text Format” (*.rtf) then edit with notepad searching for and removing “formprot” –without quotes taking care not to change anything else and making sure the path remains valid (examle: AAA/formprot/BBB should read AAA/BBB and NOT AAA//BBB when done) , save and follow the steps above, I got the same result!

For OFFICE 2003:

1) Open the locked document in Office 2003

2) Hold down/press Alt+Shift+F11 and the Microsoft Script Editor will open.

3) Ctrl+F (or “Edit” then “Find and Replace” then “Find”) and type “pass” –without quotes

4) Remove the following lines:

++<+w:DocumentProtection+>Forms</w:DocumentProtection>
<w:UnprotectPassword+>DA0FC87B</w:UnprotectPassword+>++

***REMOVE THE + SIGNS, PLUS SIGNS ADDED DUE TO HTML RESTRICTIONS***

5) Save the Document and that’s it!

Remember to protect the document as stated above, on Office 2003 just select Tools –> Protect Document  select the first two check boxes and select “Filling in forms” then Click “Yes, Start Enforcing Protection” enter your new password twice and click ok. Done. Use this same password (or no password) to disable the protection in the future.