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 I tried to set up 'Password Protect - Administrator' over the weekend. All appeared to go OK, until it was activated. I had kept copies of the User ID and password so I could copy and paste, but it refused to let me in. In the end I had to delete the .htacces and .htpassword files to restore access.
With no obvious reason for the problem I wonder if there are constraints on the characters that can be used for the password or User ID. I used an apostrophe in the UserID.
I realise I could experiment but wary of locking myself out. I wondered if this might be a known issue and documented.

That function actually works at the server level and varies from one version of Apache to another. You did exactly the right thing to get back in. Usually if the serve doesn't support the directly password protection you would get a 500 error, so I don't think that is it. Please try it with only a-z, A-Z and 0-9 and see if that helps. The apostrophe is frequently used as a text delimiter, so that may have been the problem.

Thanks Dale, without the apostrophe it now works . Obvious explanation now you point it out!

You're welcome!