Sometimes .doc or .docx text files created using Microsoft Word cannot be edited or copied. The reason for this is the enabled protection against such operations, backed by a password. This article will tell you how to remove this type of protection from a document in Word.

What are the different ways?

To overcome limitations when working with a document, 4 simple and free methods were invented:

• Inserts text into a new document as an object.
• Removing a protection setting using the WinRAR archiver.
• Removing a restriction by saving the document in HTML format.
• Convert to one of the related formats: .doc or .docx.

Each of these methods for understanding how to unprotect a Word document from editing works in any version of the editor, starting from 2003.

Method #1: Paste protected text into another document

This method has one drawback: when inserted into a new document, only text and its formatting are added, but pictures, graphs and other multimedia elements are not.

The sequence of actions for this technique is as follows:

• Create a new document - Ctrl + N.
• Microsoft Word 2003 - go to the “Insert” menu and click on “File”. Specify the path to the protected document and click “Insert”.

• Microsoft Word 2007 - 2016 - switch to the “Insert” tab and in the “Text” block, click on the inverted triangle next to the inscription “Object”. In the menu that opens, click on the line “Text from file”. Using the Explorer window that appears, open a file that is protected from editing.

After this operation, the text will become editable.

Note. To use this technique in Microsoft Word 2003, the protected file format must be DOC (.doc).

Method No. 2: editing file settings using an archiver

To use this method, you will need the WinRAR or 7Zip archiver program and the display of file extensions turned on. To make extensions visible, you need to:

• Go to the “Control Panel”.
• Switch the view to “Large/small icons” in Windows Vista, 7, 8, 10. In Windows XP you don’t need to do anything.
• Find the “File and Folder Options” or “Folder Options” icon for XP and other versions of Windows, respectively, and double-click on it with the left mouse button.
• In the new dialog box, switch to the second tab and find the line “Hide extensions for known file types” and uncheck the box next to it.

After preparation, you can remove protection from the file. This is done as follows:

• Right-click on the desired document and select the “Rename” sub-item in the context menu or select it and press F2.
• Move the cursor to the end of the name and delete the last 3 or 4 letters and write zip instead. Press Enter.

• Extract the resulting archive to any folder.
• Among the unzipped files, find a document called settings.xml. It is located in the Word folder.
• Right-click on it and select “Open with” and “Notepad” in the context menu.

• In the Notepad window, press Ctrl + F and enter the value Protection (without quotes) in the text field.
• After detecting this inscription in the text, you need to remove the following values: w:documentProtection and w:edit="readOnly".

• Save changes to the document by pressing the Ctrl + S key combination.
• Open the archive, go to the Word folder and drag the edited file into it.
• Run the archiving procedure with the option to replace files with the same names.

• Change the extension of the resulting file to the original one.

You can then open the document and edit it.

Method #3: Removing protection using HTML

This technique is approximately equal in complexity to the previous one, but it does not require any third-party software. The algorithm is as follows:

• Open a document that is protected from editing.
• Press F12, select a location to save the new file and select “Web page (*.html)” from the “File type” drop-down list.

• From the context menu of the created document, select the “Open with” and “Notepad” items.
• In the new window, in the “Edit” menu, click on “Find” or use the hotkey Ctrl + F.
• In the window that appears, enter the value Protection in the search bar and click “Find Next.”

• Find the line in the document: ReadOnlyand delete it.
• Save changes.
• Open the edited file using Microsoft Word and resave it in .doc or .docx format.

Note. When using this technique, the text formatting is partially lost.

This completes the description of the third method, which allows you to remove protection from a document for editing in Word.

Method number 4: converting to DOC or DOCX format

To remove the ban on editing using this method, you need to:

• Go to the website of the multifunctional online converter Online-convert.com and change the language to Russian using the drop-down list in the upper right corner of the page.
• On the main page, in the “Document Converter” block, select “to DOC\DOCX format”.

• On the next web page, click on the “Select files” button. In the Explorer window that opens, indicate all the documents that need to be converted.
• Click on “Start Converting”. Upon completion, the archive with the converted files will automatically download.

This is the way to understand how to remove protection from a document in Word in an online converter.

Note. Not every Internet service for converting one format to another is able to remove protection. One of them is zamzar.com. It converts successfully, but the new file cannot be modified.

The methods to remove protection from a Word document are quick and simple enough that an ordinary user of this editor can freely use them.

If you downloaded a document in MS Word format from the Internet, or you were given some kind of plan at work, college or school, then there is a high probability that the ability to edit this document will be limited.

What does it mean? This means that the document was protected from editing and copying by the person who last opened it. Accordingly, you will not be able to change anything in the text or copy the desired fragment. And when you try, an area will open on the right, as shown in the screenshot below. At the bottom of this area there will be a “Disable protection” button, but by clicking on it, a window will appear for entering the password that was set when editing was limited.

Considering that we don’t know the password, let’s look at how you can disable protection against editing and copying text in Word so that you can again make the necessary changes to the text.

Removing copy protection and text editing

You can remove the protection by changing the extension of the document itself from *.docx to *.zip and slightly adjusting one file from the created archive. Using this method, you will be able to remove protection from text editing, no matter what version the document was created in: Word 2007, 2010, 2013 or 2016.

Before you start working with the blocked file itself, you need to make sure that their extensions are shown in Explorer. To do this, open Windows Explorer (go to any folder or click on “My Computer”), click on the “Arrange” button and select from the list. This is on the Windows 7 operating system.

If you have Windows 10 installed, then open Explorer and go to the “View” tab. At the top right there will be a button “Options”, click on it and select "Change folder and search options".

After this, a window like this will open. In it, go to the “View” tab. In chapter "Extra options" need to find an item "Hide extensions for registered file types" and uncheck the box next to it. Then click Apply and OK.

Now, next to the name of the document we need, editing of which is blocked, its extension is also shown.

Select it by clicking on it once with the mouse. Then click on the name of the file itself. When the field for editing the title appears, remove the *.docx extension and enter *.zip instead. In the example, the file was called “Word.docx”, but became “Word.zip”. As you can see, we are not changing the name.

When this window appears, click “Yes” in it.

We go into the newly created archive. It will contain several files and folders. Find the “word” folder and go into it. You will see in the folder that we need it. Left-click on it and, without releasing the button, drag the file to the desktop.

Then right-click on the icon that you placed on the desktop and select from the context menu "To open with". From the proposed programs, you can choose the usual one.

The selected file will open in Notepad. Now we need to find the tag that concerns the protection and fix it a little. To open the search window, press Ctrl+F. Then enter the word “Protection” into the search bar and click “Find Next”.

This word will be highlighted in the text. As you can see, in the parameters – “edit”, it is indicated – “readOnly”, which means that this Word document can be used only for reading. Remove the fragment.

This screenshot shows the text in which the unnecessary line has been removed. After that, click to save the changes made to the document.

To do this, select it on the desktop, and without releasing the left mouse button, drag the file back to the archive. A dialog box will appear in which you must ensure that the Update Method field is selected. “Add with file replacement” and click "OK".

Let's rename our Word document again. Only now we make a Word file from the archive - change the extension from *.zip to *.docx. In the dialog box that appears, click Yes.

You can enter a document whose text has been protected from editing. As you can see, the protection in Word has been removed, and you can print in the document or copy the desired text from it.

Second option for removing protection

Let's look at another method that will help remove the protection of the necessary document. It is simpler than the previous one. I will show using MS Word 2010 as an example; these recommendations are also suitable for those who have Word 2007 and Word 2013 installed. If you have MS Word 2016, then the steps are the same, only the necessary buttons may be in other tabs.

You need to start by creating a new document. This is done like this: “Start” – “All Programs”, find the “Microsoft Office” folder and click on the “Microsoft Word” item in it.

In the new document, go to the Insert tab. In the “Text” section, click on the small arrow next to the “Object” button. Select from the list.

After this, all the text from the protected document will be inserted into a new file opened by you. And it will already be possible to change the text and copy it.

I hope these recommendations will be useful to you. Removing protection from a document in which editing and copying text is prohibited is not so difficult; choose one of the described methods and work with the necessary files again.

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Discussion: 12 comments

Thank you very much!
The first method did not help: the word “protection” could not be found.
And the second one just arrived!

Answer

Neither method works. Office 2016, Word file is protected with a simple password. When creating an archive, the required file is not there, three items - folder 6 DataSpaces, two files EncryptedPacage & EncrypionInfo in none, including in the folder and subfolders, when viewing in notepad, neither the setting nor the protect was found.

Sometimes it happens that when viewing a document created using the Microsoft Word text editor, the user is unable to either copy the text or change the contents of the file. The reason for this is simple: the creator has set a password protection called owner. Anyone who knows a lot about this will spend no more than a minute on “hacking” a protected document, since this type of obstacle can only be called serious only with a stretch. In fact, it is absolutely not difficult to remove restrictions on copying and editing a file in RTF, docx or doc format, and the same Microsoft Word program is used for this purpose. Below are two simple methods to remove protection.

Method 1

The first method step by step is as follows:

Method 2

The first method is effective, but the structure of the document is transferred without problems only if the file was created using Word of a similar version. The same applies to fonts. There is no guarantee of correct extraction of multimedia objects and photos. What's the way out? The second method is more troublesome, but more effective, since it allows you to remove the password itself, which implies gaining full access to the content and changing it. In this case, you should act like this:

Between these tags is the password we need, which must be used to unlock the file.

Which needs to be edited, but they are unable to do so for the reason that all fields for editing are locked. The attempt to copy any fragment of the document fails. The reason for this “non-standard” behavior of Word is simple - the creator of this file installed password protection.

Beginners, faced with such a problem, become desperate, being sure that it is impossible to change anything. However, this is absolutely not true. There are several ways to remove protection, thereby removing all obstacles to editing. To make all this possible, you need to familiarize yourself with the recommendations of computer gurus on how to unlock a Word document for editing.

You can confirm the assumption that the document creator has set editing restrictions by hovering the mouse cursor over “File” and in the context menu that opens, go to the “Information” line.

There you will find the “Disable protection” button, but, unfortunately, it will not help fix the problem, since after clicking it will require a password.

The “Advanced Office Password Recovery” utility does not help to remove the protection and provide the ability to further edit the document, so the best in this situation will be alternative methods of solving the problem, which do not present any difficulty, so even a beginner can easily figure out how to remove protection from a Word document.

Saving in html format

One of the simple ways to easily eliminate editing restrictions is to save the desired file in html format.

To do this, first open the document, then go to the “File” section in the menu bar, there you need to find the “Save As” line, clicking on which will open a dialog box offering a new save of the file. At this point you can rename it or change the extension. To change the extension, select “Web page” in the “File type” window; all you have to do is confirm your agreement with the actions taken by clicking on the “Ok” button.

Now you should go to the folder in which the file with the html extension was just saved. Having found it, you should not open it in the standard way; you must first hover the mouse cursor over it, then right-click to bring up a context menu in which the line “Open with” will appear.

To remove protection, you need to open the web page using Notepad. A notepad will open on the screen, in which an excessively large number of tags will be written down, which quite often inexperienced users understand absolutely nothing about. However, it is too early to panic. The next task is just to find the right tag . Having discovered such a tag, it is easy to see the password that was previously set by the creator of the document. All that remains is to remember it or copy it.

Now it’s quite easy to figure out how to remove Protected View in Word 2010. You need to open the original document, enter the copied password, after which you can immediately start working without experiencing any restrictions.

Saving in zip format

Allows you to eliminate the limitations of the HEX editor. If you open a problematic document using it, find the password value and set the following combination 0x00 instead, then when you open it again, all editing restrictions will be easily removed by entering an empty password.

You can use another simple method. The Word document is saved with the docx extension, after which the mouse cursor is hovered over the resaved version, right-clicking, calling up the context menu and going to the “Rename” line. Now you should not change the document name, but change the extension by removing docx and adding zip.

After such actions have been taken, the user will find a whole folder that should be opened and found in settings.xml. It needs to be opened using a text editor, then it is important to find the tag must be removed. When closing settings.xml, you need to confirm the changes made. After all this, editing restrictions will be lifted. All that remains is to return the docx extension and continue the comfortable work.

Setting up protection

Quite often, the user is faced with the need, on the contrary, to prohibit any changes in the created document. In this case, it is important to familiarize yourself with the recommendations on how to protect a Word document from editing.

Password overlay

Setting a password is justified when the file contains confidential information. It should be borne in mind that by setting simple passwords, they can be removed quite simply, so it is advisable to come up with more complex options that will be accompanied by a high level of reliability.

So, to figure out how to prevent editing a Word file, it is initially important to clarify which version of Microsoft Office is installed on the PC.

If this is Word 2003, you should sequentially go to the “Tools” menu bar, then “Options”, “Security”, and there you can easily find a window for setting a password.

In Word 2007, open the main Microsoft Office menu, then go to “Prepare”, then “Encrypt Document”. Now it’s easy to find the desired window where the invented password is entered.

In Word 2010, they also make several sequential transitions, initially “File”, then “Information”, and then “Protect Document”. After these transitions, a context menu appears in which you select the line “Encrypt with password”. A window appears again for the user to enter a strong password.

Once the protection is set, the file will only be opened after entering the correct password. For others wishing to familiarize themselves with protected information, the attempt will be unsuccessful.

So, installing and unprotecting Word documents is not one of the most complex tasks and problems, therefore, after reading the recommendations of the office application gurus, even a novice user can easily carry out such actions.

! This article will not help you solve the ransomware virus problem, unfortunately. Only common sense and backup can save you from these malware. By the way, if you think that backup to a shared folder on the office network or to the D:\ drive is a panacea, you are mistaken. The virus can easily go through the shares available to the current user.

You can remove protection from a Word document that is protected, for example, from editing or printing, without any programs to remove protection; you don’t have to think about what kind of virus you will install on your system along with this software. So...

Save protected Word document as HTML

Launch Microsoft Word, execute the command “File” - “Open” or click the “Open” button on the standard toolbar. Select the document you want to unlock. To remove protection from a Word document, run the command “File” - “Save As”. Select the save location, set the file type to “Web Page” and click “OK”. After this, you can unprotect the Word document.

Open the folder where you saved the document as a web page. This file will have an HTML extension. Right-click on this document, select “Open with” to remove the document protection, select the Notepad program. Use the Search By command to find the following tag in the document code: , in this tag, in turn, find the line, it will look something like this: w:nprotectPassword>ABCDEF01. Between the tags there will be a password for changing the document. To remove a password from a document, copy it to the clipboard, then open the document in Word and unlock using the found password.

The HEX editor will remove the protection!

You can also open the document in a hex editor, find the password value, and overwrite it with four 0x00s. Next, open the document in Word and use a blank password to unprotect the document.

Unprotect a document using DOCX -> ZIP -> DOCX

This means that if you need to remove protection from a document already in DOCX format, then you can skip this step and immediately change the file extension to ZIP.

Save the document in .docx format. Change the file extension to .zip (call the context menu on the file, click “Rename”, delete .docx, enter .zip instead). Open the resulting archive, select the settings.xml file, and click the “Extract” button. Open this file with a text editor, find the following tag , delete it. Next, add the settings.xml file to the archive, confirm the replacement of the file. Rename the archive to a file with the extension .docx. Open the document in Word - the protection is removed.