How to Enable Editing for Word Documents Which Have Limited Formatting Rights

Question:
I have a possession of a MS Word document (form) which has restricted areas and no formatting rights whatsoever. The document does not need to have these controls anymore. Is there anyway I can get rid of all the restrictions and enable formatting rights? I can type in the fields but cannot edit any text; I cannot even change font size, bold or even check spelling.

Answer:
Formatting rights for these controlled Word documents can be done by saving the file in Opendocument Text format. Assuming you are using MS Word 2007 or later, this can be done by opening the restricted word file and then clicking on File -> Save As and selecting Opendocument Text from the Save as type: pull down menu. MS word may prompt the following message before saving: “Filename” may contain features that are not compatible with this format. Do you want to continue to save in this format?

Select Yes. The restricted feature may still not be elminated. So, close the file and re-open. All restrictions should now be removed. Save the file as a MS Word document again and you should now have a fully editable word document.