Outlook Password Retreival

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I have a family member that’s upgrading from Office 2007 to 2010 that has two POP3 email accounts and she doesn’t remember the passwords to either of them. I’m hoping one of my brothers/sisters here can point me to a free “cracking” program to obtain her passwords before I begin the upgrade process? Yes, I know you can export/import the settings but that hasn’t always worked flawlessly in the past. More than once I’ve had to resort to manually configuring the account but I’ve always had the passwords.

I’ve seen several Freeware programs available online but I’m very skeptical about what else may be coming along with the “free” program.

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Chances are the upgrade will go OK and will pick up the information.
BUT
The passwords are to the online e-mail accounts, not Outlook. Outlook only uses them to retrieve the mail. If the passwords have been forgotten, you need to deal with the online accounts.

Open a browser and go to the e-mail provider’s website. When you click on the e-mail login screen, you will find a link for “forgot password.” Follow the instructions to change the password. (WRITE IT DOWN). The next time you use Outlook, it will ask you for that changed password.

Outlook is only a go-for the mail – it has to have the provider’s password to get in.

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I never “upgrade” an Office version as it leaves too much clutter and confusion. I’ve seen numerous computers that have had an Office upgrade with many items remaining in the Start menu from the previous version that don’t get removed during the upgrade. I’ve found it to be far better to uninstall the existing version first and then install the new version fresh after verifying there is no “Office” items remaining in the Start menu.

I’m aware of the change password function with the ISP, but I also know there are a few legitimate “password cracking” programs out there for Outlook as I’ve used one of them quite some time ago upgrading from 2003 but I don’t remember which one I used. The password change function through the ISP can be a royal pain in the butt depending on the ISP, and I know this ISP in particular fits that description.

Thanks for  your advice but I’m hoping to find out what the existing passwords are, it would make this upgrade much easier. I have this upgrade scheduled for the middle of March so this isn’t urgent and hopefully somebody can point me to one of the legitimate programs I’m speaking of by then.

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@ Ed

Ed wrote:

I’m hoping one of my brothers/sisters here can point me to a free “cracking” program to obtain her passwords before I begin the upgrade process?

I have had good luck using Nirsoft’s programs: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/#password_utils

Be aware that if you have an antivirus program, it might flag some of those programs as PUP (Potentially Unwanted Program) and might *Quarantine* the program before you can run it!

You might have to make an *Exception* rule in the antivirus program before it can be successfully run.

Good luck–let us know how it goes ….

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Ed

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Thanks NightOwl, by your comment I’m led to believe you’ve used programs from this site but have you used this particular program? Do you know if this is a stand-alone utility or does it require installation?

Both the name “Nirsoft” and your AV warning are ringing a distant bell. I remember the one I used many years ago was an executable that just displayed the results in a small “Window” and didn’t require installation, and I also remember Trend Micro quarantining it. I’d highly prefer a stand-alone executable over a program that requires installation.

Thanks again for your suggestion NightOwl, and hopefully you’ll be able to provide me with some more valuable input!

 

EDIT: after actually visiting the site it does say this is an executable file and not a program that requires installation.

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Ed, none of the Nirsoft utilities require installing, they’re right up there with the Sysinternal tools (several of which have also been red-flagged by AV companies in the past – Russinovich actually takes it as a compliment that his tools are used by hackers :)).

I use WSCC to install and run all tools from both sources, currently the default file location requires only one folder plus subfolders to whitelist them all in your antivirus software configuration: C:\Program Files (x86)\WSCC. https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/wscc-windows-system-control-center/

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Ed

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Thanks satrow and thanks again to NightOwl for pointing me to this program, I knew somebody here would pull through!

I downloaded & ran the program on the computer that’s getting the upgrade this morning and I’m happy to say it did indeed provide all email passwords that were on the computer, even the Hotmail account she had totally forgotten she had. After retrieving the passwords I went to the ISP’s webmail source and logged into both accounts successfully! For anybody reading this thread in the future here’s the link directly to the program for retrieving email passwords (and it works for practically every email – not just Outlook …. http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/mailpv.html

NOTE: As NightOwl suggested, the AV software on the computer (Trend Micro) did not want to allow access to the download. I had to disable the Real-Time scanning function and also disable ALL of the browser add-ons associated with Trend Micro to download & run the executable.

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@ Ed

Ed wrote:

I downloaded & ran the program on the computer that’s getting the upgrade this morning and I’m happy to say it did indeed provide all email passwords that were on the computer, even the Hotmail account she had totally forgotten she had.

Glad to hear you got things sorted.

Happy to have helped.

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