The differences of password protections ways in Microsoft office 2007

If you are using MicrosoftOffice 2007, you may know the methods to set password to open and password to modify for Word document, Excel workbook and PowerPoint presentation. But do you know other ways to protect their structures, formats and contents, and the measures to recover Office 2007 password?

Microsoft office 2007 password protections ways

Microsoft Word	Microsoft Excel	Microsoft PowerPoint
password to open	password to open	password to open
password to modify	password to modify	password to modify
Document Protection password	Workbook Password
	Shared Workbook Password
	Sheet Passwords

In Microsoft Word, click Protect Document under Review tab, choose Restrict Formatting And Editing, select Formatting Restrictions or Editing Restrictions, and the then click Start Enforcing Protection button to input Document Protection password.

In Microsoft Excel, you can protect worksheet content from editing, protect workbook structure and window, and protect shared workbook all by passwords in Review tab.

In Microsoft PowerPoint, besides password to open, password to modify, and restrict access as in Word and Excel, no other ways can be used to protect PowerPoint.

The ways to set password to open and password to modify in Microsoft Office 2007 will not be mentioned here, but, have you found that when you set password to modify for Word, Excel and PowerPoint, there are differences when you open it in read-only:

• In PowerPoint 2007, Save and Save as function, Protect section under Review tab, and many options under Home tab are grey and unavailable, not the same in Word and Excel.
• What’s more, the content in PowerPoint cannot be edited or copied.

Thus you cannot copy the content or save it as another file to bypass PowerPoint password to modify, you have to recover the password by software, or use the trick introduced in PowerPoint 2007 password recovery.

To recover open password of Microsoft Office, you can use Office Password Unlocker. It is one of the popular password recovery tools in the market, which can quickly recover forgotten passwords of Office 97-2007 including Microsoft Access, Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files.

Protect Office document securely in three ways

Microsoft Office is the most common used word processing software in our daily work. In many cases, the documents should not be modified or viewed by others, how to protect Office document from those peeping eyes? Actually, the applicable settings of Microsoft Office can meet your requirements. In the below text, take Word 2007 as example to introduce the specific methods.

Method 1、 Set password

In Word document, Excel workbook and PowerPoint presentation, both password to open and password to modify can be set. What’s more, there are various kinds of passwords can be set to protect workbook, structure, window, restrict access and etc. Set a strong password is the most secure way to protect Office document. Learn how to set them through other posts in this blog.

You must remember the password carefully; otherwise, you may need an Office password recovery tool to find the forgotten password.

Method 2、 Hide the content

Apart from the tips introduced in Hide and unhide columns, rows, and window in Excel 2007, we can also hide Office document content in a more ingenious way.

Press Ctrl+A to select the whole content, change the font color to be white, since document background color by default is white (if not, change window color back through personalization in win 7) , people opening it will only see a blank document. To protect Office document safer, insert a picture and put it in front of text, thus peeper may not doubt its content according to file size.

Method 3、 Improve macro security

To prevent others running macro to recover worksheet password or harm Office document, you can set macro to a high security.

Step 1、 Click Office button and choose Word Options underside.

Step 2 、In Word Options window, select Trust Center tab in the left, and then click Trust Center seetings button in the right panel.

Step 3 、In Trust Center window, choose Macro Settings tab in the left, and then check Disable all macros without notification or Disable all macros with notification in the right panel. OK.

By default, Office disables all macros with notification.

Protect Office document by using above encryption and protection methods reasonably, your Office files will be secure certainly.

Office 2003 password recovery in seconds

Though Office 2010 has been released more than one year, many Office workers are still using Office 2003. Every coin has two sides. In spite of Office 2003 is not secure as Office 2007 and Office 2010, when you carry out Office 2003 password recovery, it is easier to open your password protected Word document and Excel workbook. (This article will not discuss on PowerPoint 2003 password.)

With the following three tools, you can remove password for .doc and .xls files in a fast speed.

Tool 1: Office Password Breaker

Office Password Breaker integrates Word password remover and Excel password remover into one easy toolbox. It works to remove open passwords instantly for Word documents and reset open password to “999” for Excel spreadsheets created in MS Office 97-2003, no matter how long and complicated the password is. Even a password containing symbols, uppercase, lowercase letters and numbers with more than 15 characters could be removed or reset in seconds by the software.

I am sure you will not disappoint when using it to remove open password for Word and Excel 2003 version.

Tool 2: Office Password Recovery Toolbox
It is also an efficient tool for Office 2003 password recovery, which recovers or removes “open”, “write” and other kinds of passwords by connect to its cracking server. Unfortunately, it could not remove password for special encrypted Office 2003 file.

Tool 3: Office Password Unlocker

The software is designed to recover open password for Word Document (*.doc, *.docx), Excel Worksheets (*.xls,*.xlsx), PowerPoint Presentation (*.pptx) and Access Database (*.accdb). It cannot reset or remove password quickly, but has a very fast password recovery speed for Office 2003, on my PC, the speed is nearly 500,000 passwords per second. You may get higher speed with better computer configuration, such as multi-core GPU.

To conclude, if you do not need to find the password, Office Password Breaker would be your best choice. Otherwise, adopt Office Password Unlocker to implement Ofice 2003 password recovery rapidly.

Hide and unhide columns, rows, and window in Excel 2007

In earlier posts, we have talked about protecting the whole worksheet or workbook by several kinds of passwords, and how to recover Excel password and remove those protections. In this passage, we will learn how to hide and unhide columns, rows, and window in Excel 2007.

In business work, you may need to analyze data in a large Excel table with tens of columns and thousands of rows, such as an order report. When you just want to check certain columns, what to do with the columns between them? Hide them to make your work more convenient.

Hide columns: Right-click the first column and then select hide from the list.

To unhide column, usually you can select the two columns before and after the hidden one, and then right click to choose unhide. As the hidden one is the column A, you cannot select the column before it, but you can unhide it in this way:

Select the whole worksheet, go to Format in Cells group under Home tab, and choose unhide columns as above picture shows. All hidden columns will be shown.

The ways to hide and unhide rows are similar: Right-click the row and then select hide from the list. To unhide it, select the two rows above and below the hidden one, and then right click to choose unhide.

How could we know the columns and rows are hidden? That is easy, if the numbers of columns and rows are not sequential, then there must be hidden ones.

Hide window: Go to View tab, and click Hide button in window group. The whole Excel workbook will be hidden. Click the active Unhide button to cancel hidden.

Caution: Hide is not secure enough, do not use it to protect your Excel file.

How to only allow readers to add comments in Office Word?

To protect readers modifying your Word document, you can create a password to modify. But what if you just need their comments? For example, you write a report, and need others’ comments to perfect the report, but do not want them to mess its content and format, how to realize it?

Editing restrictions under “Restrict Formatting and Editing” in Microsoft Office Word can help you.

Step 1、Click the Review on the Ribbon.In the Protect group, click the Protect Document button.

Step 2、Choose the option “Restrict Formatting and Editing” from the Protect Document drop-down list.

Step3 、In Editing restrictions part, check the box and choose Comments in the drop–down list.

Step4、 Click “Yes, Start Enforcing Protection” button. You will be asked to input a password.Reenter it to confirm.

Important: Remember the password carefully; once you forget Word password of this kind, it is impossible to recover it.

Step 5、 Save the file, you will see that many buttons in the Ribbon are grey and unavailable, which means readers cannot change the format, and also cannot edit the content with the keyboard.

Note: Since its content can still be copied, make sure readers won’t leak it. With above steps, you have successfully protected Word 2007 from being modified.

How to remove this protection?

To remove this password protection, Open “Restrict Formatting and Editing” again, click “stop protection” button below, and input the correct password. The “Restrict Formatting and Editing” panel has now removed all password restricted permissions. And then you will be able to edit the file again.

More tips: If you cannot open a Word file without password, it must be encrypted with password to open. Use Word Password Unlocker to recover Word password.

Protect Office document without password

At the mention of Office file protection, you may think about password encryption. But it is a troublesome to recover lost MS Office password. You may need other methods to protect Office document, to avoid the possibility of getting into the predicament of Office password recovery.

Method 1: Hide File with Properties

Right click the Office file you want to hide, select Properties, in the Attributes section, check Hidden. Your file will be hidden.

To see the file, in windows 7, open any file folder, click Organize in tool bar, and then click Folder and search options to open Folder Option window. Then, under view tab, choose Show hidden files, folders, and drives. OK.

Or use registry to show hidden file:

1、Open the Start Menu, then type regedit in the search line and press enter.

2、In registry, navigate to the location below.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced

3、In the right pane of Advanced, right click on Hidden and click on Modify. Type 1 and click on OK. Then hidden files will show.

This tip is very easily cracked. To protect Office document more securely, see the below method.

Method 2: Change file extension

To adopt this method, you must set file extensions to be shown.

Step 1、 In the above picture, you can see that there are many “display” and “show” options, uncheck the one called “hide extensions for known file types”. Ok. If you have a excel 2007document, the extension- .xlsx will show.

Step 2 、Change .xlsx into .bat or other extensions to make the workbook seem as system file.

Remember the extensions, otherwise you have to find a tool to open it, and you may lose the format.

Unlike password protect Office document, both methods work to hide file thus protect its content, which is more convenient and save you from Office password recovery.

Disable password setting and enable password complexity for MS Office

With Registry, you can control password rules for MS Office, such as disable password setting and enable password complexity.

Disable password setting

You are able to password protect Word, Excel, and PowerPoint from several Office versions by setting the “password to open”. You may know that, it is quite times-costing or even impossible to successfully complete Office password recovery to get the Office password.

Since a forgotten password might result in the loss of critical business information, you may wonder if it is possible to prevent Office file from being encrypted. Yes, you are able to disable setting new passwords in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, using the DisablePasswordUI setting in registry (Note: This method is tested in Office 2007 and 2010).

Step 1 、Go to the below location. HKEY_CURRENT_USER \Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\Security

Step 2 、In the right pane, right click on the blank area, New->DWORD(32-bit) Value to create a new value.

Step 3、 Rename the value as DisablePasswordUI and double click the name to set value data as 1. 1 means Office cannot be encrypted, 0 is on the contrary.

After finishing settings, you will see that the option of Encrypt Document under Prepare is gray and unavailable. Without setting password, you will avoid the trouble of Office password recovery.

Enable password complexity

If you must usually password protect Office document, enable password complexity would be quite efficient for you.
Attention: It is said that password complexity cannot be enforced for Microsoft 2007 Office system encryption.

If you are using Office 2010, please do the following steps:

Step 1 、Go to the below location. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\Security\PasswordComplexity

Step 2、 Create a DWORD(32-bit) value named PolicyLevel , and set value data from 0,1,2, and 3.   0 is for no complexity (default), 1 for minimum length, 2 for minimum length plus requiring 3  from 4 character groups (lowercase a-z, uppercase A-Z, digits 0-9, or non-alphabetic character) , and 3 for all these checks plus at least 6 characters.

Do the same steps to create a DWORD(32-bit) value named MinLength, and then set a number of minimum length. It is suggested to fill the box with 6.

From then on, when you set a password, the system will verify whether it fits password complexity.
Important: Remember your password carefully, thus you will never be bothered by Office password recovery.

Three steps to recover Excel 2007 password

Have you forgotten your Excel password for a workbook? Or has someone left your office and they did not to tell you the password of encrypted Excel document? If you’re stuck with an XLS file that you need to break its password, you can try out a utility that enables you regain access to your Excel file.

In Excel 2007, it is impossible to remove its password as in Excel 97-2003 by Office Password Breaker, you have to recover Excel password with a password recovery utility

Step 1: Before starting to recover Excel 2007 password, you should know the password type of your encrypted Excel file, thus you would find a workable solution faster.

MS Excel password has following types: Password to open the Worksheet, Password for Modifications, Worksheet Password, Workbook Password, and VBA Modules, among which, the first three ones are frequently used in Excel. In this article, we will mainly talk about how to recover Excel 2007 password to open file. Ways to retrieve other types of password have been discussed in other posts.

Step 2: Select a powerful Excel password recovery tool. Here we recommend Excel Password Unlocker, which works to recover Microsoft Excel passwords, enabling you to easily view the data in workbooks and sheets. It provides three types of password attack: brute-force attack, brute-force attack with mask, and dictionary attack. You can choose either attack according to your situation to effectively crack the password as short time as possible. In addition, this program is super easy-to-use with a straightforward user interface. Its password recovery speed is also at high rank in all password recovery tools, which enables you to quicken running process by using multiple-core CPU.

Step 3: Use Excel Password Unlocker. Click Open to import the Excel document that you want to decrypt, choose an attack type, set the options under attack way, and then begin recovering password.

The work to recover Excel 2007 password is a time-costing task, prepare enough time for its running.

Note:If you are looking for Word password recovery, Access password recovery or Powerpoint password recovery, check Office PasswordUnlocker.

How to set and recover Word 2007 password

Since Word 2007 is widely used in our daily work, you may need to set its password or recover Word 2007 password sometimes. Read this post, you will learn something valuable.

A. Common encryption

• 1. Microsoft Office Button->Prepare->Encrypt Document.
• 2. In the Encrypt Document dialog box, input a password and click OK.
• 3. In the Confirm Password dialog box, enter the password again and click OK.
• 4. Save Word 2007 file.

Decryption method:by doing this, you have created an open password. If you forgot its password unluckily, Office Password Unlocker would be you good assistant to recover Word 2007 password.

B. Macro encryption

Actually, we can also use macros to automatically encrypted document. If you want to protect many word documents at one time, use this tip, it is more convenient.

Step 1、  Click macros under view tab in ribbon, it will pop-up “macro” dialog box. In “macro name” box, type “AutoPassword“, in “macros in” box, select “all activities templates and document“, and then click “create”

Step 2 、 Microsoft Visual Basic window will come out. Clear the content, and copy the following code into it.

Sub AutoPassword() 
With Options 
　　.AllowFastSave = True 
　　.BackgroundSave = True 
　　.CreateBackup = False 
　　.SavePropertiesPrompt = False 
　　.SaveInterval = 10 
.SaveNormalPrompt = False 
　　End With 
　　With ActiveDocument 
　　.ReadOnlyRecommended = False 
　　.EmbedTrueTypeFonts = False 
　　.SaveFormsData = False 
　　.SaveSubsetFonts = False 
　　.Password = "2002" 
　　.WritePassword = "2002" 
　　End With 
Application.DefaultSaveFormat = "" 
End Sub

Note: In the above code, Password = “2002” and WritePassword = “2002” means password to open and password to modify are 2002. You can change 2002 to the one you like.
Step 3 、 After that, save normal and close it. Open macros window, and click run button to set password.
Once you run that macros, the password will be set for that word file. You will not need to input password every time.

Decryption method:once the password is unfortunately lost, no trick can be used as encryption, you have no way but to recover Word 2007 password.

Restrict access with Information Rights Management in Microsoft Office 2007

In the market, there are many tools designed to recover Office password, theoretically speaking, password protected MS Office is not that secure. Then how to protect our Office files from unauthorized users? We can restrict their access with Information Rights Management provided in Microsoft Office 2007.

Information Rights Management (IRM) is a technology which allows for information (mostly in the form of documents and emails) to be ‘remote controlled’, which is far more secure than shared secret passwords. Authors can restrict permission for word documents, workbooks, and presentations on a per-user, per-document, or per-group basis.

Let’s see how to set restrict permission in word 2007:

1、Save the document, workbook, or presentation.

2、Click the Microsoft Office Button, point to Prepare, point to Restrict Permission, and then click restrict access. Or point to review tab in the ribbon, click restrict access under protect document section. This window will appear.

3、Select the Restrict permission to this document check box, and then assign the access levels that you want for each user.

4、To give someone Full Control permission, click More Options, and then in the Access Level column, click the arrow, and then click Full Control.

5、After you assign permission levels, click OK.

The Message Bar appears, indicating that the document is rights-managed. If you need to make any access permission changes to the document, click Change Permission.

If a document with restricted permission is forwarded to an unauthorized person, a message appears with the author’s e-mail address, so that the individual can request permission for the document.  

It is safer than setting password, and sharing it with specified persons. If a file is restricted access by using of Information Rights Management, no one can use Office password recovery tools to get the password any more.

Have interest? Try it now. Note that you should create a windows live ID at first.