Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: Turning Off Document Protection.

Turning Off Document Protection

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated May 22, 2021)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003

If you previously protected your document for change tracking, for comments, or for forms, then you will probably need to unprotect the document at some time so that you can make unrestricted changes. To unprotect your document, follow these steps:

Choose Unprotect Document from the Tools menu. Word displays the Unprotect Document dialog box. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Unprotect Document dialog box.

Enter your password in the dialog box, providing you used one when first protecting the document.
Click on OK. The document is unprotected.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (919) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Turning Off Document Protection.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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