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Guide to buying Word and Excel password recovery software
Starting out
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| Ultimate Zip Cracker showing wizard interface |
This page is to help you select the best software to recover your password protected Word or Excel file. It is based on our extensive experience with using and testing this software as a leading provider of document recovery services to a global customer base.
Before buying any software, read our free guide to find out about the types of passwords used in your file, and how to recover them.
It usually takes 2 - 4 weeks of processing to unlock your file on a single PC. If you don't want to wait that long, the Decryptum recovery service provides 3 minute turnaround using a supercomputer.
Software overview
There is quite a large range of commercial password recovery software available on the Internet. The most common password recovery task is opening documents protected with a secure file open password. Most recovery software sold is ineffective for this task, and is a waste of money.
This is because most software provides only brute force attacks. These don't work very well on secure passwords that are non dictionary words, or passwords longer than 6 characters because they could take centuries to run through the huge number of combinations. Most passwords that we come across are secure. Key recovery (which recovers the actual encryption key as a shortcut to opening the file without needing a password) is the best solution. This works for default encryption, but not the ultra-secure optional high strength encryption available in Office XP and 2003.
We have identified and tested four packages that do work because they provide key recovery. These packages are: Ultimate Zip Cracker by VDG Software (which opens Word, Excel and WinZip files and is our favourite), GuaWord / GuaExcel by Pavel Semjanov and Advanced Office Password Breaker by Elcomsoft. We have also used Advanced VBA Password Recovery by Elcomsoft to recover or unlock VBA passwords.
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| Ultimate Zip Cracker showing key recovery |
Ultimate Zip Cracker
Ultimate Zip Cracker offers a complete and cost effective recovery solution. It will unlock all the insecure password types (worksheet and document passwords), will recover Office 97 VBA passwords and remove Office 2000 and later VBA passwords, and also offers key recovery for password protected Office 97 to 2003 files (default encryption).
If your document has a file open password that uses the cryptographic service providers encryption (the strongest encryption available in Office), Ultimate Zip Cracker now supports recovery using password and brute force attacks (but not key recovery). This is a unique feature not found elsewhere.
For .XLA files, use Advanced VBA Password Recovery Pro, as Ultimate Zip Cracker does not handle these types of files. As an added bonus, Ultimate Zip Cracker can also be used to recover protected WinZip and ARJ archives.
Ultimate Zip Cracker is a very user friendly package that guides you through recovery of your document, and provides a clean interface. It provides excellent performance and is a very effective tool.
Overall, we were impressed with the professionalism and refinement of this product. In our view, it is the best available recovery package on the market, and offers great value against its competitors due to the range of passwords and packages that it supports. You can check out the trial version to see whether it can recover your password before purchase. VDG Software provides registered users with free upgrades as these become available.
Download free trial version of Ultimate Zip Cracker
Check current price / download full version of Ultimate Zip Cracker now
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| GuaExcel command line key recovery utility |
GuaWord and GuaExcel
GuaWord and GuaExcel are sold separately, but operate in a similar way. As the names imply, GuaWord is for recovery of Word files, while GuaExcel is for Excel files. These packages are designed for one thing - key recovery to unlock Word or Excel files protected with file open passwords (default encryption), and do not recover any other password types.
GuaWord and GuaExcel use a command line interface which may put off some users, but the packages are both powerful and easy to use. These programs have been recently redesigned, and are among the fastest Word and Excel password recovery packages on the market. Both Windows and Linux versions are available, and you can purchase multi-CPU versions to use if you have a network available. This allows you to distribute the processing load over a number of PC's to cut down the recovery time.
Download free trial version of GuaWord software
Download free trial version of GuaExcel software
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Check current price / download full version of GuaExcel now
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| Advanced Office Password Breaker |
Advanced Office Password Breaker
Advanced Office Password Breaker is a key recovery program that runs under Windows. It is impressively easy to use, with a clean interface. Elcomsoft are a leading provider of password recovery software, and are constantly refining their products. Registered users can download the latest updated versions of the software free of charge.
Once the program has started, it can run in the background if required. You can select the keys to search, from 0 to 65,535 and the program will look for the key and recover the document. Unlike Ultimate Zip Cracker, but similarly to GuaWord and GuaExcel, this package only recovers files with a file open password.
If you need software to recover other types of passwords, use Ultimate Zip Cracker, or try Elcomsoft's Advanced Office XP Password Recovery which does not provide key recovery, but will recover all other password types (you can download a free trial version here, or check the price or download the full version here).
Download free trial version of Advanced Office Password Breaker
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 | Advanced VBA Password Recovery |
Advanced VBA Password Recovery Pro
We've used several VBA recovery tools for Word and Excel files. One tool (which we won't name) recovered version 97 VBA passwords correctly, but when we tried it on version 2000 files, the passwords didn't work.
We have come to rely solely on Elcomsoft's Advanced VBA Password Recovery Pro software. It hasn't let us down yet. It allows you to recover all Excel and Word 97 VBA passwords, and reset (rather than recover) version 2000/XP Word and Excel VBA passwords. It also works for .XLA files. In our experience, this package does not recover other VBA passwords (e.g. Powerpoint).
The software is simple to use and stable, and there are free upgrades for registered users. Since we have used it for so long, we can thoroughly recommend it to anyone who needs a powerful VBA password recovery package. If you need to recover different password types, we recommend Ultimate Zip Cracker (which can remove Office 2000 VBA passwords), but if you need to only recover or reset VBA passwords, then this package is highly recommended.
Download trial version of Advanced VBA Password Recovery software
Check current price / download full version of Advanced VBA Password Recovery Pro now