This very strange occurance happened to me just last week and a co-worker the other day. If someone has had experience with htis or has an idea what the underlying cause is, I would truly be appreciative of their expertise in this matter.
I created an Excel spreadsheet about 1 year ago and have continued to make updates to it every month. As always, I password protect the document as I'm the sole owner of this form within our huge corporation. I have never lost sight of the file from my drive and only protected copies get distributed. Just last week when making an update to the form, I could not unlock it with my password. I tried several times with many variations figuring I was having an Aspartame moment of memory loss.
As it turned out, I downloaded a password ******* trial application that promptly and easily found the password to unlock it. It was some funky decrypted text and numbers about 9 characters long. I didn't think this could be correct, but I tried it anyway and sure enough it unlocked it!!!! How can this happen? How could the password change on its own?
I resaved it again with my old standby password and re-opened it and it seems to be fine again retaining the correct password.
Dismissing it as a fluke, I received a call from a co-worker just the other day in a complete panic because a form that he created also locked him out of his own file! I promptly used the password ******* app and sure enough it detected a password (not decrypted) that made no sense to the guy, but it did unlock the protection. What's going on? No viruses appear in virus checks.
I'm running an XP Operating System and Office XP.
He is not,...he is running 2K.
Any help would help.
__________________
Todd P. Dolce
I created an Excel spreadsheet about 1 year ago and have continued to make updates to it every month. As always, I password protect the document as I'm the sole owner of this form within our huge corporation. I have never lost sight of the file from my drive and only protected copies get distributed. Just last week when making an update to the form, I could not unlock it with my password. I tried several times with many variations figuring I was having an Aspartame moment of memory loss.
As it turned out, I downloaded a password ******* trial application that promptly and easily found the password to unlock it. It was some funky decrypted text and numbers about 9 characters long. I didn't think this could be correct, but I tried it anyway and sure enough it unlocked it!!!! How can this happen? How could the password change on its own?
I resaved it again with my old standby password and re-opened it and it seems to be fine again retaining the correct password.
Dismissing it as a fluke, I received a call from a co-worker just the other day in a complete panic because a form that he created also locked him out of his own file! I promptly used the password ******* app and sure enough it detected a password (not decrypted) that made no sense to the guy, but it did unlock the protection. What's going on? No viruses appear in virus checks.
I'm running an XP Operating System and Office XP.
He is not,...he is running 2K.
Any help would help.
__________________
Todd P. Dolce