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General discussion

Change PW in hundreds of files

Jun 28, 2004 10:42AM PDT

I need to change the passwords in hundreds of MS Word and Excel files =GLOBALLY= without having to open each file manually and changing the darn password. I cant afford hundreds they want for the filemaker password change tool. please help

Discussion is locked

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Re: Change PW in hundreds of files
Jun 28, 2004 11:29AM PDT

Just sharing that the company I have done work for encountered the same issue. Since we didn't want to spend the time changing it and they elected not to have me write the code to automate it, we took the cowards way out.

We placed the files on our file server and only those with accounts can access the files. Said accounts have passwords and we have a "cheat-sheet" with known passwords and as our group works on the documents, we change them as needed.

The code is trivial in Visual Basic and the Office package, but I can't offer such a service.

Bob

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Re: Change PW in hundreds of files
Jun 28, 2004 11:53AM PDT

I may have found a way Ill have to test later using the "/m" (macro) switch.

1. I would have to create a shell program that calls "winword.exe /mMyMacroPW01" and perhaps change the file associations to the shell program.

2. In Explorer, select all files to have their pw changed.
3. Hold Ctrl+Right click, Open, left click

That should open the first file with the same password, then open all selected files, and run the macro to change the pw in each of the files.

The only problem would be system resources getting gobbled up, so you could only run it safely on 10 or 20 at a time, but its better than one at a time.

I'll try it later and let you know. If anyone has any other ideas I'd love to hear them still so please continue to help if you can.

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Resources?
Jun 28, 2004 12:00PM PDT

Resources are virtually unlimited in Windows NT, 2000, XP and 2003. Try one of those OSes.

You can also read about Resources and "optimizing Windows" at http://www.aumha.org/articles.htm

And a TIP! I found that a BIG RESOURCE issue for those days we had nothing better than a DOS based Windows was the NORMAL.DOT file would grow over time and the Resources would shrink. Eventually I added more code to delete the normal.dot file from time to time.

Bob