Word Password Unlocker 5.0

Word Password Unlocker is a brute-force password recovery tool for encrypted Word document files. The brute-force approach implies that the program generates many passwords and tries to unlock the file with each of them until one works.

Because there are many possible combinations, it takes a very long time to find a match (if it does ever find it). For this reason, the application can save progress and continue where it left off some other day. In addition, dictionaries or masks can be used in the recovery process. In setting up a mask you can declare the minimum and maximum number of characters, the case of the letters, if numbers and symbols are included, define a custom character set, etc. This greatly reduces the number of combinations that have to be generated so it also reduces the time needed to try all of them. Of course, this time greatly depends on the processing power of your computer too.

For this review, the program has been tested to see if it can recover a two-letter password. It passed. A screenshot of the result is included.

The trial version of this software comes with two limitations: it recovers passwords of maximum three characters and doesn’t support dictionary attacks.