Uneditable document with no obvious locking

[John Dough]

I received a file from my bank (instructions for wiring money) in .doc
format, and when I opened it I was unable to cut/copy/paste, or for that
matter access any of the text in the document. I checked the file info in
the OSX Finder and there did not seem to be any access restrictions. I
looked at the file properties in Word and did not see anything unusual.

Next I saved the file as RTF, closed it, and opened the RTF file in
TextEdit. Finally I was able to access the content as one would expect to.
However, when I re-opened the RTF file in Word, I was still unable to access
the document for anything other than reading it.

Can someone tell me what is going on with this document. It is obviously
protected somehow, but how does one determine how it is protected. Also, if
this is Microsoft's idea of "protection", it obviously is not very good if
one can circumvent it by saving the file in another format and opening that
in a Text Editor.

 

[matt neuburg]

I received a file from my bank (instructions for wiring money) in .doc
format, and when I opened it I was unable to cut/copy/paste, or for that
matter access any of the text in the document. I checked the file info in
the OSX Finder and there did not seem to be any access restrictions. I
looked at the file properties in Word and did not see anything unusual.

So did you look at Tools > Protect Document? If it says Unprotect
Document, the document is protected. m.