Hey all
Got some Word documents recovered from a few old laptops I'm getting rid of, but it seems they're password protected. Now, these are MY documents (I just want to make it clear I'm not trying to do anything illegal here) and I want to get into them, but it's been so long since I used them that I can't remember the passwords. Can anyone help?
There are a few free utilities on the internet that unlock the first few letters of a password (my passwords are always really long, so this service is useless) and even one that unlocked the entire password, but didn't tell me it and tried to make me pay, so the only programs that look like they can help me will cost money, and I don't want into the files badly enough to spend £30 or so on a program I'll use eight times and then forget about. Anyone know how to get into them, at all?
Brute-force programs probably won't work either, as they would either take a hell of a long time to run (I mix up letters and numbers, so lots of possibilities) or not find the passwords (I don't generally use the dictionary words that some programs scan for, my passwords tend to be random). I did give a brute-force program a try, but it didn't look like it had a hope in hell, especially as I couldn't specify the length of the password, so it had to scan all possibilities for varying lengths, and it would have taken a hell of a long time to run.
So. Any ideas, or is my data lost forever?
Thanks
tTz
PS: My understanding is that cracking Word passwords is not illegal in any way, especially as these are my own files, and many websites seem to corroborate this, but if the mods feel the need to delete this thread, I'll understand where you're coming from.
Got some Word documents recovered from a few old laptops I'm getting rid of, but it seems they're password protected. Now, these are MY documents (I just want to make it clear I'm not trying to do anything illegal here) and I want to get into them, but it's been so long since I used them that I can't remember the passwords. Can anyone help?
There are a few free utilities on the internet that unlock the first few letters of a password (my passwords are always really long, so this service is useless) and even one that unlocked the entire password, but didn't tell me it and tried to make me pay, so the only programs that look like they can help me will cost money, and I don't want into the files badly enough to spend £30 or so on a program I'll use eight times and then forget about. Anyone know how to get into them, at all?
Brute-force programs probably won't work either, as they would either take a hell of a long time to run (I mix up letters and numbers, so lots of possibilities) or not find the passwords (I don't generally use the dictionary words that some programs scan for, my passwords tend to be random). I did give a brute-force program a try, but it didn't look like it had a hope in hell, especially as I couldn't specify the length of the password, so it had to scan all possibilities for varying lengths, and it would have taken a hell of a long time to run.
So. Any ideas, or is my data lost forever?
Thanks
tTz
PS: My understanding is that cracking Word passwords is not illegal in any way, especially as these are my own files, and many websites seem to corroborate this, but if the mods feel the need to delete this thread, I'll understand where you're coming from.
