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Openoffice Calc set password
Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 6:56 am
by rire
Hello all,
how can i set the password in open office if i need save the file to xls format ?
i know if i save the file to ods format it able for me to create password.
Thanks
Re: Openoffice Calc set password
Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 7:44 am
by probe1
please think it over:
a file in format xls saved with password opens in OOo without asking for it....
recommendation: use a ZIP utility to password protect or encrypt the file
Re: Openoffice Calc set password
Posted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 10:15 am
by marcosramos
That is NOT a solution...
Re: Openoffice Calc set password
Posted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 10:53 am
by kingfisher
That's all you can do. OpenOffice developers have reversed engineered the .xls document structure so that you can open .xls documents and even save documents as .xls. They have not been able to duplicate the .xls password setting technique.
M$ Office cannot even open an .ods document. When you are crossing from one structure to another, you cannot expect exact duplication.
BTW, anecdotal evidence is that password setting in OO is hazardous. There has been a significant number of reports of data being lost when an encrypted document becomes corrupted.
Re: Openoffice Calc set password
Posted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 10:04 pm
by Hagar Delest
marcosramos wrote:That is NOT a solution...
You're right. Because MS Office format is hardly a format to be trusted. Specification are top secret, so how OOo could implement such interoperability?
Re: Openoffice Calc set password
Posted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 10:34 pm
by Villeroy
Some years ago I removed the passwords from dozends of Excel files (XL 97/2000). I loaded a file in a hex-editor and replaced the bytes at a certain position with a certain sequence of other bytes. The password protection was gone. I believe, Calc can open password "protected" xls by simply ignoring those bytes, but there is no way to create the right byte sequence for a given password. Password protected ODF is strongly encrypted. The encryption utilizes a public available algorithm, so other programs can encrypt and decrypt using a given password. Brute force password guessing is the only reasonable method to open a password protected ODF file when the password got lost.
Re: Openoffice Calc set password
Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 9:12 pm
by marcosramos
Of course _IF_ M$ gave the information about how the xls files are build those problems should be solved quickly.
Unfortunately as it seems, password settings in OO are also a risk.
Do you guys know if any of those points will be solved in one of the next OO versions? (2.4;3)