IT Training Sheffield

Most of us these days are aware of the fact that our electronic data is not safe. Anyone on the web with a little know-how could access our computer over the Internet and get into our files. To keep our electronic data safe it is important to remember to password protect your MS Office documents. Password protecting documents takes very little effort and will prevent important or sensitive files from falling into the wrong hands.

Adding a password to your files is something that is simple and easy to do, once you know where to look. For the best protection you will want a password that is at least 12 characters long and contains a combination of letter, numbers and symbols. This will ensure that a hacker cannot easily gain access to your files.

The important thing is that no matter what password you choose for your files, you need to keep track of it. Nothing is more aggravating than trying to get into an important file and realizing that you forgot the password. Although writing down your passwords seem like a bad idea, if you are prone to forgetfulness it may be necessary. Above all you want to make sure that your passwords never fall into the wrong hands.

Luckily there are programs out there which are designed to help you retrieve your files should you forget the password. These programs, referred to as password recovery software, work in a few different ways to figure out what password you used.

Password recover software use several different methods in order to guess the right password for a file. One of these methods is to go through the dictionary and try every word in it. If you know that you always use a number or symbol in the password you can customize the search to include them.

The second method is to go through the dictionary systematically and again try to hit on the right word. Most programs will allow you to customize your search and add numbers or symbols within the password if you know that is how you structured it. If neither method has results, then the software can try to disable the password protection on the file itself instead of trying to find the password.

While there are many software programs offered for no charge, most people will have little success in getting these programs to access their files. Investing a few dollars will get you a much more streamlined program that will give you a much better chance of accessing your file, and in less time.

Once you have recovered your files, you may want to consider an alternate method keeping track of your passwords so you dont forget them. If you have a mobile or PDA and you can password protect it, then it may be a good place to keep keys to your important files. That way your passwords are close by, but not linked to your computer.

The next time you are password protecting your documents, consider opening a secure document and saving your passwords in there, then make sure that the password you place on that document is 1) easy to remember and 2) complicated enough that a software recovery program couldn’t open it. Then you wont have to worry about lost passwords or unprotected files.