Thursday, May 5, 2011

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.

75 comments:

  1. I've always used PGP for encryption its pretty safe and easy

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  2. Wow great post, very good information to know.

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  3. Thats pretty easy to do. No to figure out something important enough to do this to.... Hmmm

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  4. very useful, thanks for sharing

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  5. This post was really useful.

    Thanks, a lot appreciated.

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  6. I'll certainly keep these instructions in mind. Page favorited/followed

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  7. Wow this makes what I thought was a difficult process very easy. Your other tutorials are just as awesome!

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  8. Thanks for the tips, I'll be using this to hid my.... "secret" files.

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  9. great guide! its quick and simple i like it

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  10. this is very useful thank you.

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  11. awww thanks, didnt know that yet :)

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  12. oh yea this is exacTLYYY what i was looking for, to hide my files

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  13. Thanks for the guide, I think I might start using this.

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  14. Thanks alot for the share, not too complicated either.

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  15. nice guide, keep up the good work

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  16. Always wondered about this. Thanks for post.

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  17. I've actually been looking for a program to do this. I had one several years back but it was pretty shitty.

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  18. Thanks man! Gotta start carrying bank files, so this is just what i needed. Cool post!


    +1 thanks! Follwoed, check out my blog aswell!

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  19. this helped me alot, thanks dude :)

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  20. Your blog is superb. I'm quite happy that I found this. Honestly. Contact me if you could. Check my blog and you'll find my e-mail there.

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  21. Nice software! I will test I think ! :) Thanks

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  22. I love this post my friend! it's very helpfull for me, thanks!!

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  23. Damn this actually looks relatively easy to utilize. Thank you.

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  24. Never actually used this feature before. Although I should, thanks for the tips.

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  25. I'm learning how to do this stuff now. Thx for making it a lot clearer.

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  26. I'll def try it out. Thanks for the tip.

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  27. Good info, will be usefull for me soon enough.

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  28. Actually, I have some stuff I've been meaning to encrypt for a while. Very opportune time to come across this! Thanks!

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  29. This looks, very interesting I will have to try it.

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  30. Definitely will have to try this, thanks for the quick tutorial!

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  31. cool, that's the kind of stuff I'm interested to!

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  32. very good pot , nice detail..will be following

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  33. does this allow to encrypt a whole folder also, or should I first make the folder into a zip file and then encrypt that?

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  34. Awesome post and great info. Thanks bunches!

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  35. This is Perfect for someone like me thanks!

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  36. Awesome blog you have here, definitely following

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  37. thank you! i absolutely do have such files and i am definitely going to use this.
    +followed

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  38. AxCrypt sounds good, i might give it a try.

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  39. Thanks for the tip, that'll be pretty useful to me.

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  40. Wow, I'm loving this blog. Really really really useful information.

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  41. very interesting thanks for sharing that.
    i will try it later

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  42. very useful! I'll be back for more :D

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  43. I've been looking for something like this for so long!

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  44. Definately have to brush up! May send requests for further posts, if its okay of course! :)

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  45. thanks for the tip! very useful

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  46. Definitely useful information, thank you.

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  47. sweet thanks. encrypting some "important" stuff soon.

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  48. this should be usefull for encrypting my *insert random thing noone should EVER see*
    :D

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  49. You have no idea how much this helped me...ive been trying to store secret files for a while and now i can!

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  50. useful very much

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  51. Thanks for info

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  52. This is a great tutorial, thanks ;)

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  53. This is good, but I switched to linux months ago. Encryption is much easier, you could encrypt your whole drive if you wanted to.

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  54. Very interesting article, thanks for the information - will come in very handy!

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  55. Thank man! this will come in handy for my important files!!

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  56. truecrypt > axcrypt, thanks for the tut though : D

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  57. What's the difference between this and truecrypt? Truecrypt has a lot more users and fame.

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  58. Cheers for the tips, this will no doubt come in handy

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