Ever thought: "If I were a hacker...?" No, I don't mean you'd rob banks via the Internet. Being a hacker, though, you'd never have to re-write an annual report just because of a lost password for an Office document. You'd never have to wait if your colleague forgot to send you the info needed to open an Excel spreadsheet. Sometimes you'd wish you had some hacking skills just so as not to lose the results of your own work.

You think that these hacker guys are all geniuses? That's a myth. Stop watching those fairy tale hacker movies! The usual hacker is just a next-door teenager that learned how to apply some password-cracking algorithms.

And the truth is that you can do exactly the same thing. The theory is quite simple. Any password can be cracked. It's just a matter of time. A "brute force" attack on a password means that the software will try all possible combinations of characters. It's the longest way. But it works best for short passwords. For long passwords, you can speed up the process by choosing only specific symbol ranges or by using other clever algorithms that try words and word-like combinations first. That's all you need to know in order to start.

We recommend that you start with Accent OFFICE Password Recovery. This utility supports a wide range of Office document formats (from the XX century MS Office version 6 to Office XP/2003) and includes a handy Wizard that helps you to choose proper password recovery algorithms. The Wizard will ask you several questions about the password that you need to recover and choose a proper strategy.

While the program is very easy-to-use, it also has many advanced features. Accent OFFICE Password Recovery allows you to manage vocabularies and provides several word transmutation algorithms (case alteration, letter swapping and others). In addition, it can work with non-English alphabets if needed.

• Download Link 1