Importing of Password Protected Microsoft Office Documents

OpenOffice.org 2.0 and StarOffice 8

Document - ID	Specification Owner	Last Change	Status
	Frank Loehmann	14.09.05	Final
Conforms to	
Applies to	Writer, Calc and Impress
Task ID(s)	#111375# (Parent) #115940# (Algorithms) #115980# (Excel) #115981# (Word) #115982# (PowerPoint) #116296# (Specification) #116453# (String Check)
Category	Feature

Abstract

Password protected Microsoft Office files could not be opened in the past. This new feature allows to open password protected Word and Excel documents, using ARCFOUR encryption .

i-Team Members (The specification owner is part of the i-Team)

	Name	E-mail Address
User Experience	Frank Loehmann (FL)	Frank.loehmann@sun.com
Development	Daniel Rentz (DR)	Daniel.rentz@sun.com
Quality Assurance	Michael Rüss (MRU)	Michael.ruess@sun.com
Documentation	Uwe Fischer (UFI)	Uwe.fischer@sun.com

Approved for Implementation

	Approved by	Date
User Experience	Frank Loehmann	30.03.04
Development	Daniel Rentz	08.03.04
Quality Assurance	Michael Rüss	27.04.04
Documentation	Uwe Fischer	30.03.04
String Review	Elizabeth Matthis	03.05.04

Document Change History

Rev. Level	Change	Initials	Date
1.0	Create first draft of spec.	FL	29.03.04
1.1	Work on comments from DR	FL	01.04.04
1.2	Small dialog text changes	FL	21.04.04
1.3	Legal Review by Jeff Myers (Jeffrey.L.Myers@sun.com)	FL	28.04.04
1.4	String Finalization	FL	12.05.04

Contents

Glossary	1

1	Motivation	1

2	User Scenarios	1

3	Goals	1

4	Requirements and Dependencies	1

4.1	Requirements	1

4.2	Technical Dependencies	1

5	Competitive Analyses	1

6	Detailed Specification	2

6.1	Importing of Password Protected MS Office Documents	2

6.2	New Import Behavior	2

6.2.1	Old OO.org 1.1 Warning is Remove	2

6.2.2	Default Encryption Method is not used	2

6.2.3	Saving an Encrypted Document in MS Office Format	2

6.3	Legal Issues	3

7	Future Tasks	3

8	Notes	3

9	References	3

Glossary

Term	Description
<Term 1>	

Motivation

OO.org 1.1 is not able to open password protected Microsoft Office documents. Customers have requested this feature.

User Scenarios

User A: Eileen wants to edit a Microsoft Word document in her OO.org 1.1. She calls the open dialog and chooses the file she wants to open. When loading the document an error messages appears, the password protected document could not be opened.

Solution: Add support to open encrypted Microsoft (MS) documents to OO.org 2.0.

User B: Mike wants to send an Text document to a friend. Mike knows that his friend uses MS Office, so he decided to save the OO.org Writer document in the MS Word file format. Since the content is confidential, he wants to save it with a password that is well known only to his friend. When he tries to save the file in MS Word format, the "Save with password" checkbox in the File - Save dialog gets disabled, because the functionality is not supported by OO.org.

Solution: Future Task, due to development effort.

Goals

Support loading password encrypted documents. MS Office supports many different encryption methods provided by the underlying operating system. OO.org will only support the default "Office 97/2000 Compatible" (ARCFOUR) and "Weak encryption (XOR)" encryption method. Encrypted PowerPoint files are not supported, because PowerPoint XP and 2003 use a different encryption method which is currently not supported by OO.org.

Requirements and Dependencies

Requirements

Import MS documents encrypted with the default encryption method.

Technical Dependencies

None

Competitive Analyses

none

Detailed Specification

Importing of Password Protected MS Office Documents

The import of the following password protected file types, encrypted with the default encryption method, are supported:

Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP and 2003

Microsoft Excel 2.1/3.0/4.0/5.0/95/97/2000/XP and 2003

New Import Behavior

OO.org shows the default Enter Password dialog, if such a protected document file, encrypted with the ARCFOUR algorithm, is loaded. The dialogs (password and error dialog for incorrect passwords) itself is described in the security specification:

http://specs.openoffice.org/appwide/security/Electronic_Signatures_and_Security.sxw

The password dialog GUI has no passwords length limitation.

Replace Old OO.org 1.1 Password-Protection Error Dialog

The following Warning Dialog was shown in OO.org 1.1. This dialog gets removed in OO.org 2.0 and will be replaced by a new dialog described below and a new error dialog for encrypted PowerPoint files.

Illustration 1 OLD Error dialog of OO.org 1.1 will be removed

Error Dialog String List for Password-Protected PowerPoint Files:

The following dialog appears:

Item	English	German	Comments
Error Text	The following presentation could not be loaded:\n%DOCUMENTPATHANDFILEANDNAME	Die folgende Präsentation konnte nicht geladen werden:\n%DOCUMENTPATHANDFILEANDNAME	Dialog has an OK button; DO NOT TRANSLATE!'%DOCUMENTPATHANDFILEANDNAME'.This placholder will be replaced at runtime with the document path including the file name.
	The loading of password-encrypted Microsoft PowerPoint presentations is not supported.	Das Laden von kennwortgeschützten Microsoft PowerPoint Präsentationen wird nicht unterstützt.	

Default Encryption Method is not used

If the MS document is not encrypted with the default "Office 97/2000" or "Weak Encryption" (XOR) encryption, the following dialog is shown and the import will be aborted after the user presses the OK button:

Error Dialog String List for Unsupported Encryption Method in Writer and Calc:

The following dialog appears

Item	English	German	Comments
Error Text	The following document could not be loaded:\n%DOCUMENTPATHANDFILEANDNAME	Die folgende Dokument konnte nicht geladen werden:\n%DOCUMENTPATHANDFILEANDNAME	Dialog has an OK button
	The encryption method used in this document is not supported. Only Microsoft Office 97/2000 compatible password encryption is supported.	Die Verschlüsselungsmethode des aktuellen Dokumentes wird nicht unterstützt. Nur die Microsoft Office 97/2000 kompatible Kennwortverschlüsselung wird unterstützt.	

Saving an Encrypted Document in MS Office Format

The export of a password protected document in MS Office format is not supported in OO.org 2.0. Therefore we have to inform user, that the document cannot be encrypted when saving in a MS Office format and thus the password protection of his data gets lost on saving the document.

When an imported and previously password protected MS Office document file gets saved in the MS Office format, the following dialog appears:

Warning Dialog String List:

Item	English	German	Comments
Dialog Text	Password protection is not supported when documents are saved in a Microsoft Office format.	Der Kennwortschutz wird beim Speichern von Dokumenten im Microsoft Office Format nicht unterstützt.	Dialog has Yes / NO buttons
	Do you want save the document without password protection?	Möchten Sie das Dokument ohne Kennwortschutz speichern?	

Legal Issues

Future Tasks

The following features are not part of the specification for OO.org 2.0.

Export of password protected Microsoft Office documents

Support Encrypted PowerPoint 2003 files

Support other encryption methods used by MS Office.

Notes

##UFI: the sentence: "Only the Office 97/2000 compatible password encryption is supported." is of any value only if the Office user can select the encryption method somewhere. Else it's dev gibberish without meaning for the user.

FL: This message appears only, if the non default encryption has been choosen in MS Office (Options - Security - Advanced). This might be the case in less than 1% of all encrypted documents and mainly in a special environment or if chosen by exploring the product. But yes, the user can change this setting in MS Office, so it is important to give that hint.

References

<Give references to related documentation, such as engineering designs, technical specs, and other sources for related units. Also include links to documents that other sections in this spec need to refer to, such as user opinions usability test reports.>

PowerPoint 97/2000/XP do not support password protection at all

Importing of Password Protected Microsoft Office Documents

Page 1

http://specs.openoffice.org/appwide/interoperability/Import_Password_Protected_MS_Office_Files.sxw

Frank Loehmann

2004-03-29T11:10:09