How To Unlock Document In Word

26.07.2019 admin

Microsoft Word offers different levels of protection that can be applied to your documents, allowing you to dictate whether or not someone else can edit their content or even open them. This is done by locking your documents with a password and configuring various protection settings based on your individual needs.

How To Unlock Document In Word On Mac
How To Unlock Document In Word

How to unlock word document without password. Is the selection locked in a Microsoft Word 2016 document? Here's how you can go about unlocking it. To unlock the file successfully, you must open the file first and do a “Save As” to save the file again without the password. Now, to do this, start Microsoft Office Word then open the locked file. Enter the password when you are prompted. Once the file is opened, click on the Office button and select “Save As” or press F12 on your keyboard.

While these features are not available in Word Online, you can control who you share your documents with as well as whether or not they have edit access to said documents.

How to Lock a Word Document in Windows

Follow the directions below to lock your document via password protection functionality in Word 2010 or later.

Open the Word document you wish to protect.
Select the File tab, located in the upper left-hand corner, then select Info from the left menu pane.
Select Protect Document.
A drop-down menu will appear containing several options.
Select Encrypt with Password.
You'll be prompted to enter a password, which will be required whenever anyone attempts to open this document going forward.
1. Warning: This password is not recoverable, so be sure to store it somewhere safe.
Select OK.
You'll now be asked to enter the password again. Do so, and select OK.
A message will appear in the Protect Documentsection stating a password is required to open this document.

How to Lock a Word Document in macOS

Follow the directions below to lock your document via password protection functionality in macOS.

Open the Word document that you wish to protect.
Click the Review tab, located near the top of the Word interface.
Click Protect Document.
The Password Protect dialog should now be displayed, overlaying the main Word window.
To require a password to view this document, enter one in the Set a password to open this document field. You're then asked to re-enter this password a second time.
To require a password to make changes to this document, enter one in the Set a password to modify this document field. You're then asked to re-enter this password a second time.
1. A password will not be required to open and read this document's contents. These passwords are notrecoverable, so be sure to store them somewhere safe.
Click OK to partially or fully lock your document.

How to Add Restrictions to a Word Document

In addition to locking your Word document with a password, you can apply additional restrictions meant to control the specific types of edits other users can make. This is helpful if you're fine with providing access but want to limit certain changes to the document's content.

Adding Restrictions on Windows:

Select the Review tab, located towards the top of the Word interface.
Select Restrict Editing, found in the Protect section of the main toolbar.
The Restrict Editing interface will now slide out on the right-hand side of the screen, containing configurable formatting and editing restrictions. These include the ability to only allow comments, tracked changes, or form entries within your document. You can also limit formatting to a specific set of styles (i.e., HTML only).
1. Additionally, you can select specific regions of your document to only allow designated groups to edit them while restricting changes to all other users.
Select the X in the upper right-hand corner of the Restrict Editing interface once you're satisfied with your settings.

Adding Restrictions on macOS:

Click the Review tab, located towards the top of the Word interface.
Click Protect Document.
The Password Protect dialog should now be displayed, overlaying the main Word window. In the Protection section, place a check mark next to Protect document for.
From here, you can choose to restrict edits of comments, tracked changes, form entries, or even set the entire document to read-only. You can also include an optional password required to make these aforementioned edits if you wish.
Click OK once satisfied with your settings.

How to Unlock a Word Document

If you've previously locked a Word document, removing its password protection restriction is a fairly simple process, provided you're signed in as the document owner. Depending on your platform, repeat the steps in the respective tutorial above until you've returned to the Protect Document button.

Windows users:

Select Protect Document.
Select Encrypt with Password.
Remove the password from the field provided, then select OK to unlock the document.

macOS users:

Click Protect Document.
Remove the password or passwords from the fields provided, then click OK to unlock the document.

Let’s say you want to edit a file. You may want to give it a different name, move it somewhere else, or delete it altogether. There’s a problem, however; when you go to edit the file, Windows will tell you that another process has “locked” the file. As such, you’re not allowed to edit it. What’s going on?

Windows will naturally stop you from editing a file that’s already opened somewhere else. This is to protect it from being edited while another process is currently using it. For instance, if you open a Word document in Microsoft Word, Windows won’t allow you to delete the document while it’s open. Given how Microsoft Word is currently using the document, editing the file outside of Word may cause strange things to occur!

So let’s say there’s a file on your computer you want to edit, but Windows won’t let you. What do you do now?

What Does “Locked” Mean?

To clear things up; when we talk about a “locked” file in this article, we mean a file that is currently in use in another process. This then creates a “locked” file which you can’t edit outside of the process currently using the file. This isn’t about files with a password lock on them or folders that deny you access due to insufficient security rights; these are different ways files can be “locked!”

If You Know the Process Locking the File

Close the App Locking the File

If you’re lucky, Windows will let you know what app has locked the file. For instance, the above image shows a document locked in WPS Writer. If Windows tells you the process’ name, then it’s a simple case of finding the process in question and shutting it down. The solution in the above example is to find the WPS Writer window with this document open and shut it down. This then releases the lock on the file.

If closing the software doesn’t fix it, there’s a chance the process wasn’t fully stopped. First, ensure the process isn’t something crucial to the operation of Windows, as we don’t want to crash or corrupt the system! If you’re sure the process isn’t integral to the system, open Task Manager by pressing “Shift + Ctrl + ESC.” Click the “Details” tab, and find the process locking your file.

With the process selected, click on the “End task” button at the bottom right. Alternatively, you can right click it and click “End Task.”

If You Don’t Know the Process

Unfortunately, sometimes Windows will claim the file is locked, but it won’t tell you what, exactly, is locking the file. This is especially infuriating, as there’s no obvious way to fix the issue. How can you shut down the process if Windows won’t tell you which one is the culprit? Thankfully, we don’t have to give up hope just yet; there’s still a few more tricks we can try.

Restart the PC

As a simple solution, restarting the PC also restarts all the processes on your computer. Jedi academy kylo ren mod. This means any process that’s currently hogging your file will be restarted and will hopefully relinquish its grip on your file. It’s not a fantastic solution as it does involve shutting everything down just to unlock a single file. As a quick and easy solution, however, restarting the PC will work the majority of the time.

Use LockHunter

If restarting your PC sounds like a hassle, don’t give up hope just yet! There are third-party tools you can use to unlock your files instead of having to restart every time. An easy-to-use solution is LockHunter which helps identify what is locking your files and unlocks them for you to edit.

Once you’ve downloaded and installed LockHunter, it’s a simple case of right-clicking the offending file and selecting “What is locking this file?”

LockHunter will then pop up and inform you of the process locking the file. You can then unlock the file if you’d like, but LockHunter also natively supports deleting and renaming the file through the app for an easier time.

Taking Back Control

When you want to edit or delete a file, it’s annoying to discover it’s currently being used by a process. Simply closing the process works most of the time, but when things get a little trickier, restarting the PC or using a third-party app can help.

Have you ever been plagued with locked files? Let us know below!