Encryption software

[Bill Ridgeway]

I am looking for software to encrypt (mainly excel) files. This is to keep
away prying eyes rather than international spies so it doesn't need to be
particularly strong. Something free / Open Source would be particularly
attractive.

I should appreciate recommendations from users of such software.

Thanks.

Bill Ridgeway

 

[Mike Cawood, HND BIT]

I am looking for software to encrypt (mainly excel) files. This is to keep
away prying eyes rather than international spies so it doesn't need to be
particularly strong. Something free / Open Source would be particularly
attractive.

I should appreciate recommendations from users of such software.

Thanks.

Bill Ridgeway

Not free but not expensive, WinZip is good (up to 256 bit encryption).
Mike

 

[Anthony Buckland]

I am looking for software to encrypt (mainly excel) files. This is to keep
away prying eyes rather than international spies so it doesn't need to be
particularly strong. Something free / Open Source would be particularly
attractive.

I should appreciate recommendations from users of such software.

Thanks.

Bill Ridgeway

PowerDesk has en/decryption as one of its tools. There's also a
free version, but I'm not sure if it includes that tool.

 

[Ghostrider]

I am looking for software to encrypt (mainly excel) files. This is to keep
away prying eyes rather than international spies so it doesn't need to be
particularly strong. Something free / Open Source would be particularly
attractive.

I should appreciate recommendations from users of such software.

Thanks.

Bill Ridgeway

Why bother getting encryption software? Password the Excel file and this
shoulld suffice. Difficult enough to crack.

 

[Universe_JDJ]

I am looking for software to encrypt (mainly excel) files. This is to keep
away prying eyes rather than international spies so it doesn't need to be
particularly strong. Something free / Open Source would be particularly
attractive.

I should appreciate recommendations from users of such software.

Thanks.

Bill Ridgeway

This might be overkill, but just use Truecrypt
(http://www.truecrypt.org/) and created a encrypted, password protected
partition. Takes about a minute to set up and very easy to use.

And yes, it's free and open-source.

 

[Universe_JDJ]

Why bother getting encryption software? Password the Excel file and this
shoulld suffice. Difficult enough to crack.

The passwords can be broken into quite simply. It just depends on the
computer related skills of the "prying eyes" mentioned in the original
message.

 

[Tony Luxton]

I am looking for software to encrypt (mainly excel) files. This is to keep
away prying eyes rather than international spies so it doesn't need to be
particularly strong. Something free / Open Source would be particularly
attractive.

I should appreciate recommendations from users of such software.

Thanks.

Bill Ridgeway

Bill, have a look here -

http://www.axantum.com/AxCrypt/Default.aspx

It integrates with explorer, just comes up on the right-click menu. And it's
free. I got it on one of those coasters you get with some magazines, and
I've used it ever since.

HTH Tony.

 

[VanguardLH]

This might be overkill, but just use Truecrypt
(http://www.truecrypt.org/) and created a encrypted, password
protected partition. Takes about a minute to set up and very easy to
use.

And yes, it's free and open-source.

Rather than encrypt an entire partition, you can create a "container"
that you then mount as a drive (and give the encryption password) when
you want to access its contents. You create a .tc file (the default
extension although any could be used or even no extension) and then
mount it when needed. You can specify a fixed-size container, say
20GB, in size or you create a dynamically sized container, say 20GB
max but only the amount of space used by its contents actually gets
consumed on the disk (except you need to use NTFS for its reparse
points for dynamically-sized containers).