When you try to open a Excel workbook, PowerPoint presentation, or Word document on your mobile device, you might receive a message stating that the file is. We will show you several ways to make a locked document become editable. We assume you know the password to open the Word document. If the document.
How to lock and unlock Word document? How To Lock And Unlock Word Document? There are various files which contain sensitive information and thus needs to be locked so that the contents are not altered accidentally. MS office word provides you the feature to lock as well as unlock your files so that you can keep your data confidential.
Here, we shall discuss the right ways of locking and unlocking a MS office word file. How To Lock An Ms Office Word File? You can lock a file by providing a password. Once you save the file with the password, for editing the file or accessing it for even reading purpose, you would be required to provide the password. Write the text on your MS office word file. After completing your writing, hit the “Save As” option by clicking on the MS office button.
When the dialog box opens, you can find “Tools” written on the bottom left part of the dialog box. Click “Tools”. Select “general options” which is provided in the tools menu. Click the tools as you can see in the bottom right corner. A new dialog box opens which has two fields namely:. Password to open. Password to modify The fields as you see for entering the password for locking the document.
If you want to protect the file for modification work only, type a password for the modification field or otherwise enter the password in the first field. Doing so would require the password upon opening the document itself.
You can also lock specific segments of the Word file as well for which there is another procedure which we shall describe too. Open the MS office word document. Move over to the review tab provided at the top most rows. Click the “Protect” option.
The screenshot for the same has been provided here. A dropdown list is found. Click on the “restrict formatting and editing” button. There is an option entitled “allow only this type of editing in the document”.
Enable the option. Select the option”No changes, Read only”. This screenshot shows the above mentioned steps.
Move over to the text section and select the parts which you DO NOT want to protect. For multiple scattered selections, use control key while selecting. Remember, the UNSELECTED PORTION gets protected. If you want protection from everyone, select “Everyone” from exception section. It is an optional tab and can be left as it is. Click on the final step which says “Yes start enforcing protection”. Thus, the selected parts are locked.
A new dialog box opens where you can enter the password. Enter the password and hit OK. The portions of your file are protected.
Thus, this was the right way of locking a file. Now, we head to the right ways of unlocking a protected file.
For password protected file, open the MS office word document. It prompts you for a password, enter the password and hit OK. The file is opened. Now click “Save As” from the MS office button. When the dialog box opens, click “Tools” present at bottom right corner. Select “Security options” and in the dialog box that opens remove the password fields and click OK.
The file has been unlocked for future use. For unlocking selected fields which might be locked, the process is even simpler. Simply pressing control + shift + F11 keys simultaneously should unlock the locked fields.
If you have a password protected file which can be read but cannot be modified and you have forgotten the password, you need to do the following. Copy the contents of the word file. Open a new file by selecting new form MS office button. Paste the copied contents in the new file. Go to the review section and hit the protection tab. Move over to the “Restrict editing and formatting pane” and click “Stop protection”.
The file is unlocked and can be used. Thus, these were the basic ways of locking and unlocking a MS office word file.
When Microsoft Word crashes while you are editing a document, it leaves behind temporary files which may give the impression that you are still editing the document. Then, next time you try to open the document, you will receive an error message saying that it’s already locked for editing by you. It may help to give an overview of what happens during normal use of Word.
When you start Word, Word creates a selection of hidden temporary files, in various locations on your hard drive. If you open a document more temporary files are created. Likewise when you edit a document. If all is working correctly, these files are deleted when they are no longer required (i.e.
When Word is closed), but if Word crashes, they may be left behind. However, there are steps you can follow to get around the problems that these temporary files cause when left behind. First of all, close all instances of Word. To make sure they are all closed, press CTRL+ALT+DELETE to open the Windows Security dialog box Task Manager Processes tab select Winword.exe End Process.
Start Windows Explorer, and then navigate to the folder that contains the document file that you tried to open when you received the error message. Delete the owner file. The owner file is located in the same folder as the document that you tried to open. The owner file name is the same as the real file name, except that the first two characters are replaced by ‘$’. For example, the owner file for testing.docx is named $sting.docx.
When the owner file is gone, start Word. If Word asks you whether you want to load the changes that were made to the Global or Normal template, click No. Open your document. If all goes to plan, the above steps will have resolved your problem, and you will now be able to edit the document. If these steps, haven’t helped, you will need to go to Plan B. Plan B involves finding those pesky temporary files that Word created but never got round to deleting, and deleting them yourself. You will need to be able to see hidden files and folders, and also file extensions.
In Windows Explorer, go to the View Tab and in the Show/Hide group make sure that File name extensions and Hidden items are checked. Locating Word Temporary Files We need to delete those troublesome temporary files, and there are several places we should look to find them: Windows Temp Folder If you don’t know the path to your Windows Temp folder (it changes with the version of Windows you are running), you can type%temp% into the address bar in Windows Explorer and press Enter. It is safe to delete everything you find in this folder. User Templates Folder Press Windows + R and type in%appdata% Microsoft Templates and press Enter. Document Template If you were using a document template that was stored somewhere other than the User Templates folder when Word crashed, then you will need to remove the temporary file associated with the template in that folder. Word Startup Folder Press Windows + R and type in%appdata% Microsoft Word Startup and press Enter.
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