password protected Word XP file

[bpurser]

Can anyone help this moron who's forgotten a password to open a Word XP file? Any help greatly appreciated...don't need necessarily to open it in word, just need to review what I wrote...

Thanks in advance...

Ben

 

[hopelessliar]

I'm assuming that Word XP follows the same pattern as Excel:

You have a problem there. There is no short way to opening the file. The only way, as far as I'm aware, is to use a brute force password cracker. Depending on the length and complexity of the password, this could take anything from a few minutes to a few thousand years.

Do you have any idea what the password might be? Whether it includes lower case letters only etc?

 

[bpurser]

Sadly, no, I have no clue...file was created years ago and at the time, a password seemed like a good idea....

 

[MiggyD]

I have not used Word on XP (yet).

Does anyone know if the file is actually encrypted? or could someone change the extension to say .TXT or .WRI and use another editor?

--MiggyD

 

[bpurser]

Actually, the director of our IS group worked some magic...not sure what he did, don't much care, but I'm reading the document in Word as we speak.

Thanks, though, for everyone's input...