Remove document edit protection in Word 2007
September 29th, 2010 at 9:30 amAdd comment
When editing a word 2007 document you may, as I did, run into a situation where the document has been protected against editing. In office 2003 this can be fixed by the use of the Script Editor – as seen in this example. However in 2007 the method is a bit different, here is what I had to do – inspired by the example from 2003:
- First you need to change the .docx file extension to .zip
- Then you open the file with winrar/winzip or whatever
- You now navigate into the word folder and locate the settings.xml file – you extract this file and open it for editing
- In the settings.xml file you locate the <w:documentProtection> element and delete all attributes for this element – and then save the settings.xml file
- Now you replace the original settings.xml file (in the zip file) with the new edited settings.xml file
- Finally you rename the .zip file extension back to .docx and that’s all – you can now open and edit the file in Word 2007
Best Regards
/Peter
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May 2nd, 2011 at 16:39
This doesn’t work for me . .. do I need a Zip application to make this happen?! I know how to “Save As” pdf, word, excel etc,but I don’t have a .zip availability. The Script Editor function does not work obviously. I’m usuing Word 07 and Windows XP Pro. Please HELP!
Thanks
May 23rd, 2011 at 10:11
Hi Jason
What you need is to change the file extension of the .docx file to .zip (here is a link on how to change file extensions change file extension. Just remember that the extension you should change the document into is .zip…
Best Regards
/Peter
July 25th, 2011 at 19:25
THANKS! This is brilliant. I had found a number of sites telling me how to do this with older versions of Word, but yours is the only one that seems to have this info for Word 2010. Very helpful. Thank you.