I was given a word 2010 docx document the other day to edit, only the issue was that it had protection added to stop people from editing it which I needed to remove.
I spent an hour searching for a document password cracker / remover with no luck until I happened across a post on spiceworks which gave a easy working solution to remove the password from the word 2010 file.
So here’s the solution, for future reference:
- make a copy of the original file
- right-click and rename the extension to zip
- extract the files
- open the extracted folder and look for word\settings.xml
- right-click and edit
- find a string with “w:documentprotection”, it’ll be after the “w:proofstate” group
- cut/delete the “w:documentprotection” area of the xml file and save
- drag your new settings.xml from the extracted folder to the zip folder
- rename the zip folder’s extension with the edited .xml file back to docx
LittleBobaFooFoo ~ Spiceworks Forum
this 100% worked to remove edit protection from word 2010 docx but it should work with any office 2010 file and as they share similar file structures, it should work with office 2007 too.