Protecting whodunnit's novel draft of her zombie romance with a very strong password was a great idea. This is until you can't remember the password to unlock the Microsoft Office document. And now there is no way to enter..
Fortunately, several really useful programs remove password protection from Microsoft Office. Here are five of the best.
Before we begin, let's clear one thing up. You should only use these tools to remove passwords from your own documents. When you use one of these tools on any other document, there is a chance that you are committing a crime. We don't want to have anything to do with it..
It is also helpful to understand what the password recovery program is doing. Microsoft Office Password Recovery 10 Little-Known Microsoft Office Features You Need to Know 10 Little-Known Microsoft Office Features You Need to Know Sometimes the smallest things make the biggest differences. We uncover the forgotten features of Microsoft Office and show you how they could improve your workflow. Read More and recoverable tools . Both are useful but have slightly different purposes. Also, understand what the password does.
Microsoft Office starting with 2007 uses 128-bit AES encryption. How does encryption work and is it really secure? How does encryption work, and is it really secure? Read more . Cracking a 128-bit AES key is an extremely slow process. With a strong enough password, the file will remain secure, even using known AES-128 hops.
Finally, we consider password strength relative to the version of Microsoft Office How to Protect and Encrypt Your Microsoft Office Files How to Password Protect and Encrypt Your Microsoft Office Files Would you mind if someone took a look through your notebooks? OneNote or had access to your Word documents? ? If your answer is yes, let us show you how to protect your Office files. Read more :
We see that using even an extremely long password when using Microsoft Office 95 has minimal effect, as the encryption algorithm is vulnerable. In contrast, Office 2013 offers more protection to files with weaker passwords due to stronger encryption and hashing algorithms. Every secure website does it with your password. Every secure website does it with your password. Read more.
If you have a file from an older version of Microsoft Office, there is a good chance that you can remove or extract the password. Unfortunately, those looking to crack passwords in the latest versions of Microsoft Office are almost out of luck.
Supports: Microsoft Word and Excel 95-2003
The Free Word and Excel Password Recovery Wizard is one of the first options to consider. The program tries to unlock files using a dictionary or brute force attack (as most of the other tools on this list do). Attempting to put in a modern Microsoft Office file results in an error.
There are options to configure both types of attacks. The dictionary attack uses different case sizes with the option of a custom word list, while the brute force attack uses variable password length as well as the option of a custom character set.
Supports: Microsoft Word and Excel 95, 97, 2000, XP, 2003, 2007, also claims to be compatible with 2010, 2013
Word Password Recovery Master is another free and useful option to consider for removing and recovering passwords. It is compatible with a wide range of versions of Microsoft Office, making it useful for solving a large number of problems.
The claims of support, however, are not entirely truthful. During my tests, the program was unable to recover or remove basic passwords created with Office 2010, so I have more doubts about its ability to remove encryption in later versions.
However, Microsoft Office 2003 passwords were easy to remove. The program also notes that it does not support custom encryption types, only Microsoft Office's default encryption.
Supports: All versions of Microsoft Office
Elcomsoft Advanced Office Password Recovery (AOPR) is our first professional tool. As such, it comes with a price tag. In this case, you get what you pay for.
At $49, the Home Edition is the cheapest option. However, it doesn't allow the use of GPUs to crack or remove passwords and relies solely on CPU power (and the Home Edition is limited to a single CPU, too).
GPUs are more efficient password crackers, so if you are determined to crack that password; I would suggest upgrading to the $99 Standard Edition.
In addition to price, AOPR has a wide range of features, allowing for custom dictionaries, custom character sets, and variable password lengths, as well as running short pre-brute force dictionary attacks just in case. Also, if you know something about the password you can “mask” information to speed up the process.
AOPR is guaranteed to work on earlier versions of Microsoft Office. The program also successfully unlocked several test documents I ran, though the passwords weren't particularly difficult. Given enough time, AOPR seems like a great option (even if it's expensive if you're just unlocking one file).
Supports: Microsoft Word and Excel 97, 2000, 2003
Figure it! is a slightly older password cracker, originally developed for Windows 95. However, it still works with Windows 10, and better yet, it doesn't require installation, it runs as a simple executable file. It's basic, it only offers a brute force attack, with limited dictionaries as well. But it will work for those basic passwords, in old Microsoft Word and Excel files.
Supports: All versions of Microsoft Office
SmartKey's Office Password Recovery Program is another tool worth paying for if you find yourself in a password protected situation. Like Elcomsoft's AOPR, given enough time, this program will crack an AES-128 key (as long as the key is not that hard). Además, la interfaz de usuario es una de las mejores herramientas de descifrado de contraseñas y es sin duda una de las más fáciles de usar..
La versión estándar te costará $ 24.95 pero no permite la aceleración de GPU. Teniendo eso en cuenta, pagaría $ 34.95 por la versión profesional que permite hasta 32 CPU y ocho GPU.
Claro, hay más programas de descifrado de contraseñas de documentos de Microsoft Office por ahí. La mayoría ofrece la misma funcionalidad que los programas anteriores; Otras opciones de pago cuestan más pero ofrecen la misma gama de características.
Debe comprender que no descifrará todas las contraseñas, especialmente las que usan el cifrado más reciente de Microsoft Office, especialmente en combinación con una contraseña suficientemente sólida. Escriba una frase de contraseña de varias palabras ¿Por qué las frases de contraseña aún son mejores que las contraseñas y las huellas digitales? ¿Por qué las frases de contraseña aún son mejores que las contraseñas y las huellas digitales? ¿Recuerda cuando las contraseñas no tenían que ser complicadas? ¿Cuándo los PIN fueron fáciles de recordar? Esos días ya pasaron, y los riesgos de ciberdelito significan que los escáneres de huellas dactilares son casi inútiles. Es hora de comenzar a usar códigos de acceso ... Lea más y verá miles de horas para descifrar un solo archivo, si es posible.
