Accessing an Encrypted File

I had a excel spreadsheet which contained financial information on my
computer. I reformatted my computer and moved the spreadsheet to a small
partition on my HDD for the reformat. Now with the new installation of Vista,
I am locked out of my spreadsheet (oops).

I had the cd that has some sort of access codes on it or something, but I
think that may be with Bitlocker and not the encryption stuff.

Is there anyway I can open this file?

"Paul" <Paul@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:716D86B9-9BC9-49F1-B024-9B9237BC2B26@microsoft.com...
>I had a excel spreadsheet which contained financial information on my
> computer. I reformatted my computer and moved the spreadsheet to a small
> partition on my HDD for the reformat. Now with the new installation of
> Vista,
> I am locked out of my spreadsheet (oops).
>
> I had the cd that has some sort of access codes on it or something, but I
> think that may be with Bitlocker and not the encryption stuff.
>
> Is there anyway I can open this file?

Of course! The key backup disk that you made when you set up encryption on
your system before you "reformatted" it will allow you to decrypt the file.

Um... you /did/ make a key backup disk, didn't you?

Well, in that case, the answer is "no". When you "reformatted" your
computer, you lost the encryption key that would have allowed you to decrypt
the file.

There are lots of useful articles in the Microsoft Knowledgebase relating to
using the Encrypting File System (EFS).

--
David ****inson
eveningstar at die-spammer-die dash mvps dot org
Please reply only to the newsgroup, not by email.

"David ****inson" wrote:

> "Paul" <Paul@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:716D86B9-9BC9-49F1-B024-9B9237BC2B26@microsoft.com...
> >I had a excel spreadsheet which contained financial information on my
> > computer. I reformatted my computer and moved the spreadsheet to a small
> > partition on my HDD for the reformat. Now with the new installation of
> > Vista,
> > I am locked out of my spreadsheet (oops).
> >
> > I had the cd that has some sort of access codes on it or something, but I
> > think that may be with Bitlocker and not the encryption stuff.
> >
> > Is there anyway I can open this file?
>
> Of course! The key backup disk that you made when you set up encryption on
> your system before you "reformatted" it will allow you to decrypt the file.
>
> Um... you /did/ make a key backup disk, didn't you?
>
> Well, in that case, the answer is "no". When you "reformatted" your
> computer, you lost the encryption key that would have allowed you to decrypt
> the file.
>
> There are lots of useful articles in the Microsoft Knowledgebase relating to
> using the Encrypting File System (EFS).
>
> --
> David ****inson
> eveningstar at die-spammer-die dash mvps dot org
> Please reply only to the newsgroup, not by email.
>
>
>
>

Thanks,

I made a disc backup. I wasn't sure if it was for the bit locker or the EFS.
Thanks again. Cheers.