I have a workbook that we distribute globally. Works in every country except
France.

When you try to open the workbook you get the following:
"Not able to open because the workbook is protected by a password which has
an encoding, which is not available in your country. Ask for a version
without password."

Microsoft acknowledge the problem and state:

"French protection deviates from the standard protection (seems to be
related with official French standards for software protection). Before 2
June 2000, the laws of France did not allow documents to be encrypted by
using the RC4 encryption scheme, which Word and Excel normally use when
files are saved with password protection"


In this case, the Excel workbook was saved on a computer with U.S. regional
settings and RC4 encryption. Microsoft have a fix:
http://support.microsoft.com/default...;en-us;Q278679 however
there is a patch for word only and not excel. Further they state that
installing the latest service pack should fix this, but in fact it does not.

HAS ANYONE ELSE EXPERIENCED THIS PROBLEM AND FOUND A FIX???? THIS IS URGENT!

Thanks for your help
chris