Check if word file is password protected in powershell - powershell

Question

I've written a script to recursively loop through every directory, find word files and append "CONFIDENTIAL" to the footer. This worked fine until it came across an encrypted file which caused the script to hang and when I clicked cancel on the password prompt, it caused the script to crash. I've attempted to
check if the document is encrypted before opening it but the prompt still opens which crashes the script. Is there a reliable way to check if the document is password protected that will work on .doc and .docx files? I've already tried using the code in the other thread and the first two methods don't work, the third method detects every file as encrypted because it throws an exception.
Current code:
$word = New-Object -ComObject Word.Application
$word.Visible = $false
$files = Get-ChildItem -Recurse C:\temp\FooterDocuments -include *.docx,*.doc
$restricted = "CONFIDENTIAL"
foreach ($file in $files) {
$filename = $file.FullName
Write-Host $filename
try {
$document = $word.Documents.Open($filename, $null, $null, $null, "")
if($document.ProtectionType -ne -1) {
$document.Close()
Write-Host "$filename is encrypted"
continue
}
} catch {
Write-Host "$filename is encrypted"
continue
}
foreach ($section in $document.Sections) {
$footer = $section.Footers.Item(1)
$footer.Range.Characters.Last.InsertAfter("`n" + $restricted)
}
$document.Save()
$document.Close()
}
$word.Quit()

Answer 1

You can just use get-content.
$filelist = dir c:\tmp\*.docx
foreach ($file in $filelist) {
[pscustomobject]#{
File = $file.FullName
HasPassword = [bool]((get-content $file.FullName) -match "http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2006/keyEncryptor/password" )
}
}
sample output:
File HasPassword
---- -----------
C:\tmp\New Microsoft Word Document (2).docx False
C:\tmp\New Microsoft Word Document.docx True