Expert: Keith Davis - 11/7/2009

Question
Dear Davis,

My computer recently infected by viruses, and the more serious problem is some of my Microsoft Word documents become password protected. It always alerts for password when i open those Microsoft Word documents. I am using Microsoft Office 2003.

I formated my computer and tried to clean those files, however, still the Microsoft Word documents are still password protected.


Could you please advise what should i do? Is there any default password which generated by those viruses?

Please apologize for any inconvenience. I am looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Best Regards,

Kimsan

Answer
If the viruses are gone and the file is still password protected, it may just be a matter of changing the file attributes. You can go to one of the word files, right click it and click properties. There will be different tabs according to what operating system you have. In these tabs you will be able to change file permissions to disable the password. If you will let me know what operating system you are running I can give more specific direction.

Unless you have tried it already, you could uninstall Office and re-install. This may correct the problem unless the file settings are held in the attributes of the file.