Are you trying to copy the passwords when that password dialog is open?

If yes, then excel won't even let you select your cell while that dialog is
waiting for your input.

I'm gonna guess that the time you actually did it, you had two instances of
excel running. And you were actually swapping applications (the two
applications just happened to be excel, though).

I think I'd use a intermediate helper application.
I'd open the workbook that contains the passwords.
then windows start button|run|Notepad|and hit enter.
then copy the names and passwords from excel into notepad.

You could even close that password workbook if you want. And close Notepad
without saving when you're done. (Or just move all the passwords into a plain
text file and open it when necessary.)

neeraj wrote:

I have several workbooks which I have to password protect for both read and
modify. I have prepared another Excel workbook say Book1 containing both
these passwords (random generated through a program) for each workbook. I
dont want to manually type the long string of text into 'open' and 'modify'
box, that too twice . So I am trying to copy and paste the values from Book1
into these boxes but cant seem to do it now. The funny thing is that I was
able to do it for a couple of files but now it is not allowing me even to go
to Book1 to copy the text. Any ideas?

--

Dave Peterson