I need some urgent help guys. Word doc password protected, any way to bypass it?

TonyTurbo78 · 13 Apr 2018 at 19:47

hi guys.

Wife is in a difficult position, don't need to go into the details, but long story short, has a very important meeting Tuesday, CEO who left yesterday under incredible terms has password protected doc and now is either playing stupid or genuinely forgot what she changed it to. There are dozens of important pages and she's pooping herself, in a bit of a state.

Is there anyway to bypass the word doc password or go about retrieving the info from inside it?

I've been looking online, only way seems to be with certain tools, but I'd rather not have to pay for that and risk god knows what. I've tried some of the old tricks from the past, changing the extensions, converting with adobe, deleting word settings.xml file etc but cant get in. Security looks a bit tighter with Windows 10/Office 2016.

thanks in advance.

CaptainCrash · 13 Apr 2018 at 21:41

If it's Word 2007 or later the encryption is effectively unbreakable for all practical purposes, so you'll need a tool which can mount a brute force/dictionary attack and hope that the password is relatively simple.

I had a quick google and found this - I haven't used it myself but the tool costs nothing so it couldn't hurt to try. If you know part of the password it would increase your chances of cracking it before the heat death of the universe...

TonyTurbo78 · 14 Apr 2018 at 00:05

A

CaptainCrash said:
If it's Word 2007 or later the encryption is effectively unbreakable for all practical purposes, so you'll need a tool which can mount a brute force/dictionary attack and hope that the password is relatively simple.

I had a quick google and found this - I haven't used it myself but the tool costs nothing so it couldn't hurt to try. If you know part of the password it would increase your chances of cracking it before the heat death of the universe...

Thanks but already tried that tool and a bunch of others. They all follow a similar trend...you run the tool, it then tells you because the password found is longer than 3 characters you need to click this link to purchase full product.

CaptainCrash · 14 Apr 2018 at 01:33

I suppose in that case you have to make a judgement on whether or not you trust the software and its publisher... if the program is from a well-known company (e.g. this one https://www.elcomsoft.co.uk/aopr.html) and it's telling you that it's actually found the password* and not just that it's longer than three characters, but won't remove it until you've paid for the full product, it might be worth a shot depending on how badly you need the document.

If you're not 100% confident in the publisher's bonafides it could be an idea to use a prepaid debit card just in case.

*edit: just noticed the rig in your signature, so *if* the password was relatively short and simple and the app could use GPU acceleration then it's not entirely beyond the bounds of possibility...

namnoc · 14 Apr 2018 at 09:19

I would go with Captain Crash's suggestion. Get the company to pay for the full version for you then advertise your password cracking services on here for £40 a go......

AHarvey · 15 Apr 2018 at 09:03

TonyTurbo78 said:
hi guys.

Wife is in a difficult position, don't need to go into the details, but long story short, has a very important meeting Tuesday, CEO who left yesterday under incredible terms has password protected doc and now is either playing stupid or genuinely forgot what she changed it to. There are dozens of important pages and she's pooping herself, in a bit of a state.

Is there anyway to bypass the word doc password or go about retrieving the info from inside it?

I've been looking online, only way seems to be with certain tools, but I'd rather not have to pay for that and risk god knows what. I've tried some of the old tricks from the past, changing the extensions, converting with adobe, deleting word settings.xml file etc but cant get in. Security looks a bit tighter with Windows 10/Office 2016.

thanks in advance.

If you'd like to fire it over to me I can have a look for you, it's been a while since I last had to do it but I have a spare hour this evening and could try it for you.

TonyTurbo78 · 15 Apr 2018 at 09:33

AHarvey said:
If you'd like to fire it over to me I can have a look for you, it's been a while since I last had to do it but I have a spare hour this evening and could try it for you.

Thanks. Will pop the doc over to you today.

chili · 15 Apr 2018 at 12:08

Have you tried this

copy that file and rename with file extension.rtf and open with wordpad, you will loose the formatting if you care. Then either copy doc or save as word.

I also found this

Try this

1. Rename the extension name of the document to ZIP, like as a ZIP compressed file.

2. Double click it and open it in Windows Explorer, navigate to Word folder.

3. Delete the Settings.xml file from the folder. And then close the Window.

4. Rename back to DOCX file.

5. And done. Next time when you open the same document, you will not be prompted by the password window.

TonyTurbo78 · 15 Apr 2018 at 14:35

@chili Yes tried all those Friday as I said in my OP but thanks for trying. Sadly wont work on Windows 10/Office 2016 as you can't open the file at all. When you double click it after renaming the extension, windows explorer wont open it at all, just comes up with an error message.