Monday, September 17, 2012

Our Office's HR  person wanted us to submit a vacation-use form to account for taking off early after working late earlier in the week.  For example, if I worked over two hours on Monday, and knocked-off two hours early on Tuesday, she wanted a vacation form to show why I wasn't at work for the two hours on Tuesday.

The problem is that our vacation-use form wasn't designed for such a thing, and I needed to modify it to fit this need.

Alas, some well-meaning soul had placed a password on the file that  prevented me from adding the extra category.

Since I didn't know who that well-meaning soul was, I went to the all-knowing Google.  I found this tip so helpful that I wanted to share it.

Thanks to James Welch at Jameswelch.com, I have the answer.

  • Save the password-protected document in RTF.  
  • Open the file using your favorite text editor.  
  • Find the string {\*\passwordhash ########}, where the ######## represents the password hash.  (hint look for the passwordhash portion.)
  • Remove the hash
  • save the file
Now, when you open the file, you can remove the security without being prompted for a password.

More details can be located here