How to bypass protection on a MS Word Document
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I recently got tasked by my boss to unprotect a document that he needed to change. it was downloaded from a website, but it was outdated and needed to be updated. The document itself was not locked, but it was set up as a form, with certain fields that data could be entered into. The rest of it was locked, protected and needed a password to be unlocked. Most programs out there made for cracking Office passwords will work only on the access password, not the document protection password. However, there is an easy way to get around this, no program or programming required. Just do the following-

1) Open the protected word document, and save as it with a different name and a rich text format.
2) Open up the rich text format version of your word file, and then save as again, except this time save it as a word file.
3) Open up the newly created word file, and go to Tools>Unprotect Document
4) A password prompt should appear, just click ok (leave the password field blank).
5) Voila, it should be unprotected and ready for changes.

One problem I did encounter was that this would not function correctly on my work computer. I had to take the document over to my laptop for it to work. Also, I haven’t tried this with a MS Office 2007 file, the file I was using was a 2003 file. Hope this helps.