Remove password protection in Word 2007

Today i had to deal with a document, written in Word 2007, which was protected by a password.
I could open the document but most menu functions where grayed out and i could not select any text.

Because i wanted to edit this document i played around and finally found a way to remove the password.


The following steps removed the protection from the document:

1. Open protected document in Word 2007.
2. Click the colored Word button in the upper left corner and Save document as Word 97-2003 document.
3. Close Word and re-open the just created document.doc (note file extension is doc now!)
4. Choose menu Review->Protect Document and press button Stop Protection .

No password is asked and the document becomes unprotected now!