Erratic Workbook Password Problems

[Rich Kooyer]

A friend of mine set passwords on his excel files. Some are on his local
drive and others are on a network share. He comes in to work two days ago
and he can not open them. Yesterday he is able to open them using the same
password that did not work before. Lastly, he closes out of the documents
and tried to open them an hour later and they do not take his password to
open the spreadsheets.

We attempted to reconnect the machine to his docking station and the
wireless network connection is turned off. He was still unable to open the
workbooks with his password. He then e-mailed the workbook and it still will
not open on my local drive with the password he gave me. I suggested that he
remove the passwords when they miraculously open up for him again. Is there
a solution for this problem?

 

[Bernard Liengme]

Use passwords that are easy to recall
Know if you used a mix of upper and lower case characters
Check that keyboard is working
If you are hiding data from co-workers: Put the file on a thumb drive, tie
this around your neck and forget about passwords.
best wishes

 

[Rich Kooyer]

Hello There,

The password is all alpha characters. The password did not work one day and
then it worked the next morning. The password is eight lower-case letters
with no special characters and we verified that it wasn't a keyboard issue by
opening Word and typing the password. It is a laptop so maybe the
docking-undocking of the machine while the excel document is open may be an
issue.

I've suggested taking all passwords off of his documents and saving to a
removable media if security is a concern. Eventually this document will
probably repoen.