Word 2007 password bug

A curious little bug in Word 2007.

Writing a book means delving into details and finding the unexpected – that happened as we prepared Privacy and Security in Microsoft Office.

According to Microsoft, Office passwords can be up to 255 characters, however our tests of Office 2007 found an interesting and apparently undocumented bug in Word 2007.

Word 2007 has a limit of 15 characters in the password entry field under Save | Save As | General Options …

Typing a 16^th or more character will cause a little ‘ping’ sound on your computer, that’s all. If you paste in a password only the first 15 characters are accepted.

However if you go to Office | Prepare | Encrypt document to enter a password you can enter a full 255 characters:

This only happens in Word 2007; Word 2003 and Word 2010 accept longer passwords in the same dialog.

Excel 2007 and Powerpoint 2007 has a longer password field in both the Save/Save As dialog and Encrypt Document dialog.

Privacy and Security in Microsoft Office has a lot more about password protecting Office documents including some simple tricks to make encrypted documents much harder to hack.

See Also

• Privacy and Security in Microsoft Office
• How to remember your passwords
• Does COFEE intrude on Office?
• Tempest in a Word Form Password teapot
• Office password recovery