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.
Writing a book means delving into details and finding the unexpected – that happened as we prepared Privacy and Security in Microsoft Office.
Word 2007 has a limit of 15 characters in the password entry field under Save | Save As | General Options …
Typing a 16th 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.
- 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
