MS Office Passwords and Password Recovery Programs
January 5th, 2009 | by Michael Mylar |Most of us these days are aware of the fact that our electronic data is not secure. Anyone on the web with a little know-how could access our computer over the Internet and get into our files. To keep our electronic data safe it is important to remember to password protect your MS Office documents. Password protecting documents takes very little effort and will prevent important or sensitive files from falling into the wrong hands.
Adding a password to your files is something that is simple and easy to do, once you know where to look. For the best protection you will want a password that is at least 12 characters long and contains a combination of letter, numbers and symbols. This will ensure that a hacker cannot easily gain access to your files.
There is one small downside to password protecting your documents ” what happens if you forget the password to a file? While you probably like to write down the passwords to your documents somewhere, this is not very safe as someone could find them and all your documents would be at risk. At the same time if you dont write them down you run the risk of losing all your important data if you forget the passwords associated with the files.
Luckily there are programs out there which are designed to help you retrieve 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.
Next the software will try different combinations of letters, numbers and symbols to get into the file. If your password was short and simple then it should have no problem getting in, but if you use long, complex passwords the software will need some time, and there is no guarantee that it will be able to find the right combination.
While there are many software programs offered for free, most people will have little success in getting these programs to access their files. Investing a few dollars will get you a much more streamlined program that will give you a much better chance of accessing your file, and in less time.
Once you have recovered your files, you may want to consider an alternate method keeping track of your passwords so you dont forget them. If you have a mobile or PDA and you can password protect it, then it may be a good place to keep keys to your important files. That way your passwords are at hand, but not linked to your computer.
The next time you are password protecting your documents, consider opening a secure document and saving your passwords in there, then make sure that the password you place on that document is 1) easy to remember and 2) complicated enough that a software recovery program couldn’t open it. Then you wont have to worry about lost passwords or unprotected files.
Tags: computers, document security, excel, ms office, office, password, password removal, powerpoint, recovery, security, Software, word