I don't understand the XML question. In ODT and ODS, the protection keys are in the content.xml and settings.xml files. You can just delete the settings.xml to get rid of those protections (read-only and change-tracking). For the protection locks in the content.xml, you need to edit the xml. The web page on Safe Use of Protection sketches one approach at the end. For OOXML (.xlsx), the structure of the files is more complicated and I have not done the work to figure out how to hunt down and defeat the protections there. The simple approach is to simply try a cross-product transfer. Open the .xslx in LO; open the .ods in Microsoft Office. -----Original Message----- From: Tom Davies [mailto:tomdavies04@yahoo.co.uk] Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2012 08:21 To: dennis.hamilton@acm.org; 'Dr. R. O Stapf'; users@global.libreoffice.org Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: how to crack a PW in LO? Hi :) Brilliant!! Ahhh, just thought of a problem. Was it xls or xlsX? If it has an X at the end then just rename the file to replace .xlsx with .zip and then double-click on it. Can the xml files be pulled into a new file without pulling the password along at the same time? Regards from Tom :) [ ... ] -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+help@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted