Although not 100 per cent guaranteed, this may well help you to obtain access to Microsoft Office documents for which you have lost or forgotten the password.

Compatible with all versions of Office, including international ones, it can help with password recovery for Word, Excel and Access. A Professional edition is available that adds more applications to its repertoire, including Outlook, Schedule+ and Project.

The program states that recovery of the 'password to open' in Word/Excel 97/2000 is virtually impossible, due to strong encryption. Other versions and applications, however, have much weaker encryption and should be recovered in a matter of seconds.

It can also be used to reset the Content Advisor password of Internet Explorer.

Three methods are available to recover passwords: brute force attack, mask attack and dictionary attack.

If you know some of the letters of the password use a mask attack, and if you use words that can be found in a dictionary as passwords use a dictionary attack. If all else fails try a brute force attack, but be prepared for a long wait.

Success rates vary according to the method used and the amount of assistance you can provide, but many passwords will be recoverable.