How to Remove “Read only” attribute on MS Word files

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This article shows you how to remove “Read Only” mode that does not allow editing on Microsoft Word documents. Although you cannot remove the read-only mode of a secured Word document without knowing the password, you can easily copy the contents of the Word document into a new Word file.

Table of Contents

Steps

Remove Protected View in online files

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Find out which documents are normally protected. Any Microsoft Word document you download from the Internet (such as an email attachment or a file on a web page) is protected every time you open the file. You can remove this protection the first time you open the document.

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Open the Word document. Double-click the Word document that you want to remove read-only.

• If the Word document is open, you will close the window and open it again.

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Look for the light yellow notification line. If you see a light yellow message saying “Files from the Internet can contain viruses” displayed above your Word document, your document is eligible. Apply this method to remove read-only mode.

• If you don’t see this message even after you’ve closed and reopened the Word document, try one of the other methods in this article.

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Click the Enable Editing button displayed to the right of the message line. This will refresh the Word document and remove the read-only mode. You can now edit the text.

Remove Protected View from a file with a password

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Open the Word document. Double-click the Word document that you want to remove protection from. You will see the text displayed in Word.

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Click the Review tab in the upper-right corner of the Word window. This will open the Review toolbar at the top of the Word window.

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Click Restrict Editing at the far right of the Review toolbar. This will bring up a menu on the right side of the window.

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Click Stop Protection at the bottom of the pop-up menu. The screen will display another window.

• If you or another user with access to your computer has set up passwordless protection, clicking Stop Protection will automatically remove the protection.

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Enter the password when prompted. Type the text’s password in the “Password” field, then click OK . This will remove the read-only mode of Word documents immediately if the password is entered correctly.

• If you don’t know the password, you will have to copy and paste the contents of the file.

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Save changes by pressing Ctrl + S (on Windows) or ⌘ Command + S (on Mac). From now on, the file is no longer read-only unless you re-enable editing blocking.

Change file properties

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Access Word documents. Find the folder containing your Word documents.

• If the file is not saved on your computer (such as on a USB stick or CD), you need to transfer the file to your computer before continuing.

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Open the properties of the Word file. The operation will vary depending on your computer’s operating system:

• Windows — Click once on the Word file, right-click it, and select Properties from the menu that appears.
• Mac — Click the Word file, choose the File menu in the upper-left corner of the Mac screen, and choose Get Info .

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Find the “Permissions” section. On a Windows computer, you’ll find the appropriate options in the “Attributes” section of the Properties window.

• On a Mac, you’ll click the Sharing & Permissions heading near the bottom of the window.

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Remove read-only mode. Again, the action will vary depending on whether you’re on a Windows or Mac computer:

• Windows — Uncheck the “Read-only” box near the bottom of the window, click Apply , and select OK .
• Mac — Click the Read option to the right of your name, then select Read & Write from the menu that appears.
  • You may have to first click the padlock icon in the lower-left corner of the Get Info window and enter your Mac’s password before you can do this.
• If this option is grayed out, unselected, or the file is in “Read-only” mode, you must copy and paste the text.

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Edit files. Open the Word document by double-clicking the file, and then editing. Note, you may have to remove the online read-only mode before proceeding.

Copy and paste content

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Learn this method. If your main goal is to edit Word documents, you can copy the contents of the Word documents and paste them into the new Word documents, and then save the new documents to your computer. Although this does not remove read-only mode on the original text, it creates an editable copy.

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Open the protected Word document. Double-click the Word document to do this.

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Click anywhere on the text. This will place the mouse pointer over the text page.

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Select the whole text by pressing Ctrl + A (on Windows) or ⌘ Command + A (on Mac). You will see the entire text highlighted.

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Copy the selected text by pressing Ctrl + C (on Windows) or ⌘ Command + C (on Mac). This will copy the text content to your computer’s clipboard.

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Open a new Word document. Click File in the upper-left corner of the Word window, click New on the left side of the window, and click Blank document to open a new Word document.

• On a Mac, click the File menu and choose New Blank Document at the top of the menu that appears.

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Paste the copied content by pressing Ctrl + V (on Windows) or ⌘ Command + V (on Mac). This will paste the contents of the locked Word document into the blank page.

• You will have to wait a few seconds at this step if the original text has a lot of content or contains images.

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Save the text as a new file. Press Ctrl + S (Windows) or ⌘ Command + S (Mac), then name the text and click Save . You can edit the newly created text as usual.

Advice

• Another way to remove read-only mode from Microsoft Word documents is to convert Word documents to PDF using the SmallPDF online converter, download the converted PDF file, and then convert the PDF file to Word document with SmallPDF.

Warning

• It’s easier to copy the contents of protected text and paste it into new text than it is to try to crack Microsoft’s security.

This article shows you how to remove “Read Only” mode that does not allow editing on Microsoft Word documents. Although you cannot remove the read-only mode of a secured Word document without knowing the password, you can easily copy the contents of the Word document into a new Word file.

Thank you for reading this post How to Remove “Read only” attribute on MS Word files at Tnhelearning.edu.vn You can comment, see more related articles below and hope to help you with interesting information.

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