I had some password protected Word 97 documents on a Sandisk jump drive and they have been deleted. I have tried several free file recovery software applications and at least one recovers the files with a missing first character, but the data that is recovered appears to be encrypted. I am not prompted to enter a password to open the files, it is like they are encrypted permanently. Word wants me to specify the encoding or something like that, but none that I select makes the gibberish look much different. I would appreciate any suggestions as to how I can get the files, or even partial text in the files back.
Thanks
 

My guess is that it only was able to partially recover, and so what you have are corrupted files.

However, you could try some other document / text editor applications just to see, I suppose.  Maybe try OpenOffice or LibreOffice Write.  Then maybe a couple of text editors such as NotePad++.  I'm not saying you'll get anywhere with it, but if you're still trying, those are all free, and worth a shot.

 

"But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 1 Corinthians 15:57

You can search word password recovery program in Google. I suppose they are many useful tool can help you solve the problem.