To view data in a password-protected drawing, you open the drawing in a standard way and enter the password. Passwords are not case-sensitive.

Unless a drawing's properties, such as the title, author, subject, and keywords, were encrypted when the password was attached, you can view the properties in Properties dialog box in Microsoft^® Windows Explorer.

A password-protected drawing may contain external references (xrefs) to password-protected drawings. If you open a password-protected drawing that contains xrefs, you are prompted to enter the password for the current drawing. Then you are prompted to enter the passwords of any xrefs whose passwords are different from a password you have entered in the current session. A specific password that applies to a drawing or xref generally is required to be entered once per session.

A drawing and its external references remain password-protected until the passwords are removed. You generally should remove passwords before performing batch operations on files, unless you are signing files.

If data in a password-protected drawing is read for any reason by the program, the password must be entered at least once per session of program use.