Edit MS Office document protection settings without spoiling formatting Loads of people probably know this, but I thought I'd mention it here because it seems related to the discussion... WinRAR's ability to "reach" inside MS Office *docx and *xlsx file types which allows access to the settings.xml file, which in turn offers access to the various security and protection settings of the item. WinRAR will allow injection of an edited version... Basically this allows you to remove most of the protection re: word and excel documents... Very easy, just change the file's extension to .rar, extract settings.xml, edit what you need, inject the new settings.xml overwriting the old, save and rename extension back to *docx or *.xlsx - most restrictions can be removed (search for wocumentProtection entries and edit or delete them) and far easier than most suggestions I've found which spoil the original formatting. Errr, I don't know that this wouldn't work with WinZip as well, can anyone tell me if it does? - just curious. Thanks
I think that WinRAR has a better GUI, I don't think that anyone has disagreed, and that there are some ISO's that 7-Zip will NOT open but WinRAR WILL for some reason. WinRAR handles password compressed files better than 7-Zip allowing you to exit out easier if you want to, where sometimes I have to kill 7-Zip with task manager if I need to abort. WinRAR SOMETIMES handles multi-level rar inside a zip inside a rar etc type of files better than 7-Zip but that is hit or miss and both ALWAYS work 100% if you just expand each layer to a temp location and "start over" with the next layer from scratch. All that being said, I still always reach for 7-Zip first. I obviously have found it useful to have both available, as well as Universal Extractor as a third alternative, but then I collect tools of all kinds. They can all have context menu options in place and they don't interfere with each other that I have seen. I usually keep the latest install file available for all the other archiving programs mentioned in this thread, just in case - as I said, I collect tools. LOL Past favorites have included IZarc and PowerArchiver. But I couldn't tell you when I last ran across an archived file that either 7-Zip, WinRAR, or Universal Extractor couldn't handle. Cheers and Regards