WD2000: You Can Modify Linked Document Object That Contains Password

If your document contains a password in the Password to modify box, and you insert the document into another Microsoft Word document as a linked object, you may be able to make changes to the original document without typing the password.

To work around this problem, save the linked document and type a password in the Password to open box. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Open the document.
2. Click Save As on the File menu.
3. On the Tools menu in the upper-right corner of the Save As dialog box, click General Options.
4. Type a password in the Password to open box, and then click OK.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

The password to modify, read-only recommended, and forms protection passwords in Word are not recommended for strong security. The password to open is safer, but because key lengths are limited to 40 bits, this method is still vulnerable to brute-force attacks.

The best security is to use a secure file system such as NTFS, which is included with Microsoft Windows NT and Microsoft Windows 2000. NTFS offers up to 128-bit encryption integrated into the file system. For additional information about forms passwords, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: