How To Remove Protection from a Word Document

How To Remove Protection from a Word Document

Have you ever come across an old word document (with .doc extension) that you protected from editing now you need to change it but cannot remember password and did not store the password somewhere to reference. Well here is a way to get the password.

1. Open a protected document in MS Word
2. Save as "Web Page (*.htm; *.html)", close Word
3. Open html-document in any Text-Editor
4. Search <w:UnprotectPassword> tag, the line reads something like that:

   <w:UnprotectPassword>ABCDEF01</w:UnprotectPassword>
   

5. Delete the Password between the tag <w:UnprotectPassword>
6. Save the htm file
7. open the htm document in word again
8. unprotect it and save it to Word Document format
9. You should now be able to edit the word document

Warning Note: this will remove any macros that you may have on the document.