Decrypting old MS Word docs

[david]

On Fri, 2005-06-03 at 08:58 -0400, Stephen R Laniel wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 03, 2005 at 03:20:17AM -0400, nocturn wrote:
> > All I know is that up to 6.0, word used a very silly way to protect
> > files.
> > 
> > Try viewing them with strings, maybe the password is readable.
> 
> Good idea, but it doesn't look like the password is in the
> clear. Lots of other strings in the document are, like the
> metadata and some title text. Otherwise it's still
> encrypted.
> 
> Even if it were decrypted, I can't find a way to open it.
> OpenOffice doesn't know what to do with documents that are
> password-protected in the old Word way; it fails to open the
> document, rather than prompting me for a password.
> 
There's antiword. But I don't know if it will work with password
protected files.
It's available via synaptic.

nux