Crack Excel password protected sheets, no software required

5/04/2009

Over time, Microsoft has increased the importance of security in their pecking order, but Microsoft Excel’s password protection is still rather lack-luster. A few days ago, a co-worker had asked me for help in recovering a password she had forgotten for an old Excel spreadsheet. Luckily, this can be done with absolutely no additional software.

This routine provides a password to unprotect your worksheet. However, it may not give you the original password that was used. Read the rest of this article »

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Make Windows fonts look as smooth as Mac OS X fonts

29/03/2009

Ever wonder why everything just looks a little bit better on a Mac? That’s because Apple OS X uses a different font rendering technology than Windows. That can easily be changed though, and there’s a little program that can do it with ease.

Now before I open up this can of worms, people each have their preference, and we can argue for days about which one is better. Personally, I like the way the OS X looks. GDI++, a Japanese application, does just that. It takes just about 5mb of memory and sits in your task tray, rendering everything on your system in GDI++ instead of ClearType (the typical windows font rendering tool). And when you disable it, it just puts everything back to the way it was. It’s really easy to activate, and gets rid of jaggy fonts. Read the rest of this article »

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