HONG KONG BAPTIST UNIVERSITY

Information Technology Services Centre

How to Protect your Microsoft Office Documents
Microsoft provides a password-protection feature for you to safeguard your Office
document including Word, Excel and PowerPoint files.
A password is case-sensitive and can be up to 255 characters. We highly recommend
you to set a password with at least 8 characters. Microsoft adopts AES 128-bit
advanced encryption by default. You can choose other encryption techniques if you
want. When choosing a password, you may consider to combine uppercase and
lowercase letter, number and symbol for a stronger protection. For instance,
Y68h!et5 is a strong password whereas House27 is a weak one. It is important that
you must remember your password. If you forgot your password, ITSC or even
Microsoft is not able to open your Office documents.
The procedures for setting password in Microsoft Office documents are as follow:
For Office 2003 Documents
1. Open the Tools menu at the Menu Bar and select the Options item.
2. In the Options Dialog window, click the Security tab.
3. In the File Encryption options for this document section, enter your password at
the Password to open box and click the OK button.
4. You will then be asked to retype the password again for its confirmation.
5. To make the password effective, you need to save the document once as usual by
clicking the Save icon.

For Office 2007 Documents

1. Click the Microsoft Office button and point to the Prepare item.
2. Select the Encrypt Document option.
3. In the Encrypt Document dialog box, type your password in the Password box
and then click the OK button.
4. In the Confirm Password dialog box, type the password again in the Reenter
password box.
5. To make the password effective, you need to save the document once as usual by
clicking the Save icon.

Last Modified: 08 May 2008

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