Remove Passwords / Editing Restrictions On Word And Excel Files

Have you ever come across a word or excel document that was ‘password protected’ – where certain parts of the document you were unable to edit?

And have you ever add to change o document but forgot your password?

Don't worry,  we'll teach you how to do it. All you'll need is notepad and something that can open zip files, like 7zip.

1. Ensure your file is in the latest .docX or .xlsX format. If your file is in an earlier office format, do a ‘Save As’, select ‘docx’ as the format type, and make sure you leave the ‘maintain compatibilty’ box empty. We want the latest file format.

2. Open windows explorer and find your file. Make a copy of the file, and change the file extension from .docx to .zip.

3. Right click the .zip file, and using the 7zip context menu, ‘Open Archive’ using the 7zip archive manager. This will allow you to edit the .docx archive without extracting the XML files inside.

4. Navigate to /word, and find the settings.xml file. Right click the file, and select ‘edit’. – This is important, do not choose ‘open’ or any other option – only ‘edit’ will work.

5. Find the XML element beginning with w:documentprotection, highlighted in the screenshot above. Remove the entire element, including < and > brackets.

6. Save, close, and update the archive when prompted.

7. Rename your file, changing the .zip extension back to .docx

8.Done

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