Open Office Question

kazzer

I've just started using Open Office as a replacement to the Micro$oft Office suite. So far I think its great, and oh yeah, its free.

One of the great things about Open Office is its compatability with Microsoft file types (Word, Excel , etc). I have alot of these files on my computer and most of them work fine. I'm having a problem with some however, that were previously password-protected when i was using Microsoft.

It just comes up: "Error loading file, password-protected". Thats all, theres no option to do anything.

Does anyone know what to do without re-installing MS Office?

Thanks.

maxheadroom

kazzer wrote:

Does anyone know what to do without re-installing MS Office?

You could try googling for "Microsoft Word/Excel/Powerpoint/Whatever password cracker"?

Cabaal

I've never had any luck with OO and password protected .doc files
Apart from loading them in Word and removing the password that is....

aidan_walsh

Forgive the ugliness. I've not tried any of these, to be honest, just pulled it off Google.

Fenster

I recall that .doc files are just a form of zip archive and that there's a method to unpack them with tar.

Capt'n Midnight

Since microsoft don't make thier password schemes public OO didn't go down the road of reverse engineering it. So open in M$Office and save.

Anyway all a password can do is stop you opening an Excel file. Once you can open it then any info in the protected cells/sheets can be easily copied into a new sheet - it's all or nothing..

zoro

Mr Midnight has half the story there ... I believe that it's actually illegal for them to allow users to open password protected files, as it would mean that they would have to have circumvented the password protection illegally.

And you can be damn sure that MS would sue 'em for doing that!

kazzer

Thanks for the help guys.

Since microsoft don't make thier password schemes public OO didn't go down the road of reverse engineering it. So open in M$Office and save.

I will probably have to end up doing this, its just I no longer have MS Office on my system, and I wanted to avoid installing it again!


I knew I might have a problem opening these password-protected files, but I just expeceted OO to pop up a dialog asking me for the password.

Thanks again

Ste-

If you want to just view the file and not edit it then install excel viewer.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4EB83149-91DA-4110-8595-4A960D3E1C7C&displaylang=EN


I too like Open Office and have found this a problem.

LastIrishMonkey

also wondering is there a word count on open office ??

zoro

LastIrishMonkey wrote:

also wondering is there a word count on open office ??

Yup - took me a very long time to find too!

It's called a finger

daymobrew

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Since microsoft don't make thier password schemes public OO didn't go down the road of reverse engineering it. So open in M$Office and save.

I spoke with an OO developer. He said that they did crack the M$Office password scheme but lawyers prevented them from including this code in the product.
It will be in OO 2.0 (March 2005) and maybe in a 1.1.x release (current = 1.1.3 but it might not be until 1.1.5).
In the meantime, a password cracker, if it can disable the password protection, is probably your best non-M$Office route.

kazzer

Thanks for the help guys.

BTW for anyone not using OO, I recommend to give it a go! Its free, and has most things you would want from MS Office.