HOW TO ENCRYPT AND DECRYPT IMPORTANT FILES

Do you have sensitive, private or secret files that you don't want anybody else to see? You can keep them safe using the encryption tool AxCrypt. The open-source freeware AxCrypt is an encryption/decryption tool made to work with Microsoft Windows and can both encrypt and decrypt multiple files quickly and easily. AxCrypt uses the industry standard AES cipher of 128-bit strength, which is pretty much impossible to crack.

AxCrypt is the #1 open source file encryption software for Windows. It integrates perfectly with Windows to compress, encrypt, decrypt, store, send and work with just about all types of individual files. AxCrypt is an open-source program, making it even more secure and reliable, as the code has been tested by many thousands of expert programmers worldwide.

Download Axcrypt here: http://www.axantum.com/AxCrypt/Downloads.html. This download is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows. Be sure to choose the one for your specific version of Windows. The download is available both as a portable program and as an installation program. The installable version has more features and integrated easily into Windows.

Once you've finished installing AxCrypt, you can encrypt any file you want with ease. Just right-click the file you want to encrypt and click AxCrypt → Encrypt as shown.

You will be asked for a password for encrypting the selected file. Type the password and then type it again (to verify that there was no typing error). Then click on the OK button to start the encryption.

The selected file will be encrypted, and an extension of .AXX will be added to it's original filename. The icon of the encrypted file changes to the icon of AxCrypt (a green vault with a yellow key on it). If later on you wish to decrypt the file, then just right-click on it and select AxCrypt → Decrypt as shown.

yYou will be asked to reenter the password. Enter the same password that you used to encrypt the file. Then click the OK button to decrypt the file.

The decrypted file will be extracted (with the original extension) in the same folder as the encrypted file.

An alternate option to encrypting the original file is encrypting a copy of the original file, by selecting AxCrypt → Encrypt a copy. This leaves the original file as it is and creates an encrypted copy in the same folder. Similarly, if you select AxCrypt → Encrypt copy to .EXE,  it will create an encrypted executable file (.exe) in the same folder as the original file. The encrypted EXE is great option if you want to send the encrypted file to a friend who doesn't have AxCrypt installed. Your friend can simply double-click on the encrypted EXE file and type in password to decrypt it without needing to install the AxCrypt themselves.

You can also randomize the file name of the encrypted file, so that no one can guess what the original file was. Just right-click on an encrypted file and choose AxCrypt → Rename. The selected files will be given random names. When you decrypt the randomly named files, you'll get the original filenames back, as AxCrypt stores the original filenames inside the encrypted files themselves.



In conclusion, AxCrypt is superb tool for encypting your personal secret documents. It uses a powerful AES encryption, meaning that it's very reliable. This is an indispensable tool that everyone should have on their computer.