I’ve got some old password protected files (high school science exams)that were put together 6 or so years ago and some twit (possibly me) didn’t write down the password. Is there any easy way to open them now removing the password protection? Learnt my lesson to always record passwords for ald files somewhere obvious. Any help appreciated.

It is possible, there are various paid services and tools, but there are also some free brute force tools that work on some problems – depending on file type (doc or docx) and if it is the Open or Edit password. I think the one I have used with reasonable success is called “CrackIT” but speed will depend on your computer, how long the password is and if you are able to remember if you might have mixed case, numbers, symbols etc.

what age of word were you using at the time? .docx is an xml format so there are some ‘opions’ available to you.

Not sure if it works in Word but it does in excel
If you have a gmail account email it to yourself, open it in google docs and then export as an excel (or in your case word) file

I used to be able to just open them in open office.

Good trick with google docs if it works!

The google docs one didn’t work unfortunately, found a hard copy so will just OCR scan it in and get an editable word doc that way.

I’ve edited password protected ms docs in the past by embedding them within other docs (can’t remember whether excel embedded in word or visa versa and it would have been around 2002 software).

Worth a shot?!

We use Accent Office password recovery here at work. It works well but we did pay for it. I think you can download a free trial that will tell you if the password can be cracked (if you pay…)

I seem to recall being able to import text into quark or indesign, got shed loads of code first but the text was there, it was a long time ago so may have used other software, it was back in the days of zip drives, worth trying though.