Word Documents Highlighted in Yellow

1 Answers

1. 
   

   
   

   Solution Center on Sep 28, 2017

   Your documents are protected. You can temporarily remove the highlighting by clicking on:
   Review >> Restrict Editing >> and uncheck the box, “Highlight the regions I can edit”.

   In order to permanently free yourself of the yellow plague, you will need to click the “Stop Protection” button at the bottom of the “Restrict Editing” panel. If your document is password-protected, it will require an elaborate workaround as described here:
   http://www.thinkoholic.com/2015/02/16/remove-unknown-password-protected-word-files/

   1. Open the Word file in question (doc, docx)
   2. Choose “File”, “Save File As”, and make sure the file format is set to “Rich-Text-Format (*.rtf)”. Close the file in Word (important!)
   3. Open the new Rich-Text file with a text editor (e.g. Notepad or Notepad++). You can do so by dragging and dropping it into the editor window, or choose “File”, “Open File”, and set the file format to “All files (*.*)”.
   4. Find (ctrl-f) “passwordhash” and replace the string that follows with something else (e.g. “nopassword”). Save and close the file in your text editor.
   5. Re-open the modified Rich-Text file in Word, go to “Review”, “Restrict Editing” and click on “Stop Protection” Uncheck all tick-boxes.
   6. Done. You’ve unprotected your Word file without ever knowing the password.
   7. Optional: Convert your file back to its original file format by selecting “File”, “Save As”, and choosing the original file format.