Opening a document encrypted in Microsoft Word

I am in a job where I need to be able to easily send and open documents that have been encrypted, but most of my colleagues use Word to create to create their documents. I've figured out how to encrypt a pages document and send it, but I still can't figure out how to open a document that was created and encrypted in Word. When I try to open it, I get a message that says "The Word document is password protected and can't be imported" but doesn't give me an opportunity to enter the password. Any clues as to how I can access these encrypted files?