Cannot open password-protected Japanese language document in Office 2003 program (838574)

SUMMARY

You may not be able to open a password-protected Microsoft Office 2003 document when you use the Japanese version of Office 2003 or when you use the English version of Office 2003 with the Japanese Multilingual User Interface Pack installed. This problem may occur when the Office document was password protected while the Language bar was used in Kana mode. To open the password-protected document, either turn on Kana mode on the Language bar, or type the password in Notepad and then paste the password into the Password dialog box when you open the document in your Office 2003 program.

SYMPTOMS

When you type a password in the Password dialog box to open an Office document, the password may not be recognized and you cannot open the Office 2003 document. This problem occurs in the Japanese version of Microsoft Office 2003 or in the English version of Microsoft Office 2003 with the Multilingual User Interface Pack installed.

CAUSE

This problem may occur when all the following conditions are true:

The password-protection operation is performed on the Office document while the following two condition are true: the Input Method Editor is used and Japanese characters are typed in Kana mode.
The Office document is shared among multiple users.
The password-protected Office document is opened while using the Input Method Editor with Japanese selected as the input language on the Language bar, and the Language bar is used in non-Kana mode.

RESOLUTION

To prevent this problem, turn off Kana mode on the Language bar before you type the password to protect the document in Microsoft Office Word 2003. To turn off Kana mode, make sure that Japanese is selected as the input language on the Language bar, and then click Kana on the Language bar.

Note Kana mode is turned on when the Kana button on the Language bar looks like the button is depressed.

WORKAROUND

To work around this problem when you know that the document password was set by using Kana mode, use one of the following methods.

Method 1: Turn on Kana mode

To turn on Kana mode, follow these steps:

On the Language bar, make sure that Japanese is selected as the input language, and then click Kana.
Type the password in the Password dialog box, and then click OK.

Method 2: Use Notepad

To use Notepad to work around this problem, follow these steps:

In Notepad, type the password for the password-protected document.
Copy the password text that you typed in Notepad.
In Word 2003, open the password-protected document, and then paste the password in the Password dialog box. Click OK to open the document.

MORE INFORMATION

When you type Kana characters in a Microsoft Office 2003 document while Japanese is selected as the input language on the Language bar, and then you type a password in the Password dialog box to password-protect your Office 2003 document, the password is typed as Kana characters. Kana characters may be typed when Kana is selected on the Language bar and the Language bar appears to be unavailable (most of the buttons on the Language bar looked depressed).

For more information about how to require a password to open or modify a file, click Microsoft Office Word Help on the Help menu, type password in the Search for box in the Assistance pane, and then click Start searching to view the topic.