The Restrict Editing task pane displays buttons for moving to the regions of the document that you have permission to change. When you open a protected document, Word restricts what you can change based on whether the document owner granted you permission to make changes to a specific part of the document. If you are prompted to provide a password, type the password. In the Restrict Editing task pane, click Stop Protection. On the Review tab, in the Protect group, click Restrict Editing. If you are an authenticated owner of the document, or if you know the password for removing document protection, do the following: Or you might have to be listed as an authenticated owner for the document. To remove all protection from a document, you might need to know the password that was applied to the document. Note: Encrypting the document prevents others from working on the document at the same time.