Microsoft Office password protection

Microsoft Office password protection is a security feature to protect Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) documents with a user-provided password. As of Office 2007, this uses modern encryption; earlier versions used weaker systems and are not considered secure. Microsoft Office password protection is a security feature to protect Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) documents with a user-provided password. As of Office 2007, this uses modern encryption; earlier versions used weaker systems and are not considered secure. Office 2007–2013 employed 128-bit key AES password protection which remains secure. Office 2016 employed 256-bit key AES password protection which also remains secure. The Office 97–2003 password protection used 40-bit key RC4 which contains multiple vulnerabilities rendering it insecure. Microsoft Office applications offer the use of two main groups of passwords that can be set to a document depending on whether they encrypt a password-protected document or not.