How do you disable password protection in Excel?

[John]

Hello,

I'm a Systems Administrator looking after about 150 desktop users, all with
Office 2007 Profession loaded.

We have a problem with some users assigning document passwords even though
it is against our corporate policy. The trouble is that if/when these users
leave the organization, their private password usually goes with them, and
the company ends up in a bind as a result.

We would like to completely disable the user's ability to set a password on
a document. Is this possible? We're running Active Directory, and have GPOs
created to push Office configurations out, but I cannot find an option that
would allow me to disable password protection.

 

[Kevin B]

I don't believe that you can disbale protection, but document passwords are
not particularly difficult to break. There are a number of utilities (some
of them are even free) that will do the trick for you. The free ones just
iterate through assorted combinations and can crack the password just by
brute force. A commercial utility that recovers passwords might be the way
to go.

Hope this helps.