Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Using Password Recovery Software for MS Office

By Albert McZeally

All of us want to protect ourselves. At home we have fire alarms, sprinklers and burglar alarms to keep our families safe. Car alarms and GPS for our cars keep our car and its occupants safe, and the rest of the time we are on the lookout for runaway cars, buses and those who would try to do us harm. For the same reasons we choose to protect our sensitive files from anyone who would want to use the contents for something untoward.

By placing a password on your important files you are ensuring that your documents are safe from those who would seek to exploit it, such as identity thieves. If you own a business you will want to do the same for your financial information as well as and documents that contain info about your clients. While you may not think it is important now, if the data should ever get stolen you will be thankful for it.

The important thing is that no matter what password you choose for your files, you need to keep track of it. Nothing is more irritating than trying to get into an important file and realizing that you forgot the password. Although writing down your passwords seem like a bad idea, if you are prone to forgetfulness it may be necessary. Above all you want to make sure that your passwords never fall into the wrong hands.

Luckily there are programs out there which are designed to help you recover your files should you forget the password. These programs, referred to as password recovery software, work in a few different ways to figure out what password you used.

There are many kinds of password recover software, but most of them work in the same way. They will try to access the file by guessing the password. If your password is relatively strong it may take some time for the software to find the right combination of characters.

To start the program will work through the dictionary, combining each word with numbers or symbols if you request. If your password is an actually word, then you should have some luck here. Otherwise the software recovery tool will carry on to the next step, which is to try combinations of letters, numbers and symbols until it finds the right combination. The more complicated your password is, the longer the program will take to find the answer.

If your password is very complex there is a chance that the software will not be able crack your password. In this case you will need to take the last resort option and have the software disable your password protection entirely. While this is not the best option as it will leave your files vulnerable while you re-protect them, if you cant get into your files by other means and your files are important to you then it has to be done.

While this type of software is a great tool to use when you forget your password, it should not replace whatever method you use to keep track of your passwords. Create a bomb-proof file with a long and complicated password to store the keys to your other files, and commit the password to this document to memory " do not write it down, or if you do keep it in a safe place where no one will find it. Then you can rest knowing that all your files are safe and sound.

Password protecting your file can be a pain yes but think of the alternative. The next time you are password protecting your MS Office file which include: word, excel, outlook, powerpoint, etc you think if creating a separate secure password protected file to store all your passwords in. This way you can access them all with the simple use of one password. - 16492

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