How to Remove Passwords from Protected Microsoft Word Documents

Here's the scenario.  The person you replaced at your new office desk created a form in Microsoft Word and password-protected it.  To make matters worse, the person who created the form is now: 1) unreachable, 2) in the hospital, 3) in jail, or something even more bizarre.  How to remove the password?  Well, in order to remove a password, you usually need to know what the password is.  That is the challenging part.  I found a fix for Excel today, which is to just install Apache Open Office and open the Excel file in Open Office Calc, then go to the Tools>>Protect Document and un-check "Protect Document" and/or "Protect Sheet."  This un-protects the document, which can then be re-saved as an Excel file and re-opened in Excel without the protection. 

In Microsoft Word 2010, for example, this method didn't work as well for me in Open Office Writer.  Instead, it opened as a "Read Only" file in OpenOffice.  So, I had to look elsewhere for a solution.  The good news is that I have found a solution which works.  I went to Jim's Blog.  The solution will require that you save the file as an .RTF document and then use NotePad to do the removing of the password protection.  I don't know Jim (yet), but I tip my hat to him for figuring out a solution to a problem that has plagued secretaries and other office workers for a very long time.  I hope this solution helps you too. 

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