Hello everyone!

In this article, we will explain how to protect a file, change or remove the password using ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors.

ONLYOFFICE is often mentioned among the best free alternatives to Microsoft Office Suite. Trust us, ONLYOFFICE deserves it. Our developers do their best to make switching from MS Office easier thanks to our software 100% compatibility. Therefore, ONLYOFFICE provided its Desktop Editors with password protection based on the same encryption algorithm AES-256 as used by MS Office. That allows opening password protected MS Office files using ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors.

To protect your document with a password

Go to the Protection tab and click the Encrypt icon.

OR

Go to the File tab, open the Protection section on the left sidebar and click the Add Password button.

The Set Password window opens. Type a password and confirm it. The password is case sensitive. Use a strong password (here are some tips on how to do it). When ready, click OK. Save the file to make sure the password takes effect.

Need to change or remove your password? These processes are simple and similar, but you always have to know the original password.

Open the protected file using Desktop Editors and enter the password.

Go to the Protection tab, click the Encrypt icon, choose the Change password or Delete password option.

The same options are available in the Protect section from the File tab.

The password protection option is currently available in Desktop Editors only, to work with files stored on your computer. When you connect Desktop Editors to the cloud and try to open a protected file, you’ll be asked for a password, but once you enter it and open the file, the current password to the file will be reset and you’ll not be able to set a new one for the file in the web storage.

To securely work with documents stored in the cloud, make use of the End-to-end encryption option, released this year as a developer preview. To read more about this technology, please refer to this article.

Try now security features in ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors:

GET STARTED

For more details about document protection with a password using Desktop Editors, please visit our Help Center.

As always your suggestions and comments are welcome: please, use the section below or tweet us at @only_office.

Working with protected MS Office documents in ONLYOFFICE

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