Possible to Change File Passwords En Masse?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Cheryl
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Cheryl

Good Afternoon Windows Experts,

Working with XP Pro SP2; Office 2003 SP2 .

I'd like to change file passwords en masse (doc, xls, zip, etc.)

Is there a way to perform a search in Windows to find all files that are
password protected? I'm guessing the answer is "no".

Thanks for reading.
Cheryl
 
I don't believe that password protected documents have any metadata
(Data about other Data) or file attributes that would be a searchable.
Personally, any password protected files I have are located in a folder
identified as "Secured", just to isolate them from non-secured ones.
 
Cheryl said:
Good Afternoon Windows Experts,

Working with XP Pro SP2; Office 2003 SP2 .

I'd like to change file passwords en masse (doc, xls, zip, etc.)

Is there a way to perform a search in Windows to find all files that are
password protected? I'm guessing the answer is "no".
Click to expand...

Your guess would be correct. Office files and zip files use different
formats and routines to store their passwords. The only way you could do it
would be to attempt to access the file by trying to open it (or in the case
of zip try to extract an item from it) and see if that fails due to the
presence of a password. I'm not aware of any application that will do this
type of scanning for you, but if one exists it likely isn't cheap.
 
| Cheryl wrote:
| > Good Afternoon Windows Experts,
| >
| > Working with XP Pro SP2; Office 2003 SP2 .
| >
| > I'd like to change file passwords en masse (doc, xls, zip, etc.)
| >
| > Is there a way to perform a search in Windows to find all files that are
| > password protected? I'm guessing the answer is "no".
|
| Your guess would be correct. Office files and zip files use different
| formats and routines to store their passwords. The only way you could do
it
| would be to attempt to access the file by trying to open it (or in the
case
| of zip try to extract an item from it) and see if that fails due to the
| presence of a password. I'm not aware of any application that will do
this
| type of scanning for you, but if one exists it likely isn't cheap.
| --
| Tom Porterfield
|

Thank you Tom and R. McCarty for replying. That's a good idea about keeping
password-protected files separate from the rest. Wish I'd thought of that!
A-searching I will go - one by one. Thanks, again.

Cheryl
 
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