What is Microsoft Office password protection?

Microsoft Office password protection is the security feature of MS-Office productivity suite (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) with the user-provided password. In Office setup 2007 this used the strong encryption whereas the earlier version used the weaker systems and aren’t considered secure.

Office 2007-2013 used 128-bit key and Office setup 2016 using 256-bit key AES password protection which also remains secure. Office 97-2003 password protection used 40-bit key RC4 contains multiple vulnerabilities, making it insecure.

Microsoft Office password protection application mainly concentrates on the main groups of passwords that can be easily set to the documents depending on encrypt password-protected document or not.

Those passwords that don’t encrypt a password-protected document have different security level features for each of the MS-Office apps as listed below-

•       In MS-Word passwords, forbids the modification of the entire document.
  
•         In MS-Excel passwords, forbids modification of the workbook, a worksheet within it or individual elements in the worksheet.
  
•        In MS-PowerPoint passwords, forbids modification of the entire presentation. 
  

For more information on downloading Microsoft Office password protection, you need to visit Microsoft Office official website (or Office.com/setup).

Due to the lack of the document encryption, all the passwords as mentioned beside the apps couldn’t be relied on protecting a document from the hackers. Most of the advanced password cracking software can easily, in a blink of an eye can remove the password-protected document.

Microsoft Office password protection that encrypts a document restricts the user from opening the document. Putting the password for all the Office apps is possible. The wrong password wouldn’t let the user open and edit the password protected document.

The hacker needs to first decrypt the password- protected document to get access if it is encrypted with a password to get the contents. To provide with the better security, Microsoft Company is continuously changing the Office encryption algorithm strength.