Password Protection for Windows XP

How to Password Protect Files in Windows

It's too bad there is no obvious method to add a password to a file on a Windows XP system. But there are several ways to get the job done, with varying levels of inconvenience. Let's look at a few ways to do password protection:

If you have Microsoft Office, you can protect your documents with a password. To do so, first open the document. In Office 2007, click the Office button, move the cursor down to Prepare, then click Encrypt Document. (In older Office versions: Click Tools, then Protect Document.) Now enter a password in the dialog box and press OK. Re-enter the password and press OK again. The next time you try to open the document, you will be prompted for this password.

So what if you don't have MS Office, or you want to protect something that's not an Office document? There are hidden files in Windows, but anyone with a mouse and a few brain cells to rub together can easily find hidden files.

Password Protection Via Compressed Files

There is another way to add password protection to any file on a Windows XP system. It involves using compressed (zipped) folders, and it a little clunky, but it works for all files, not just Office documents.

To begin, open Windows Explorer and navigate to the file you want to protect. Right-click on the file, select Send To, then select Compressed (zipped) Folder. A new folder will be created, with an icon showing a zipper on a file. Double-click to open the zipped folder, click File, then Add a Password. Enter the password twice and press OK. You're done, except that you now have the original file, and the zipped file with password. So delete the original file. From now on, when you open the zipped folder, Windows will prompt you for the password.

I should mention that you can generalize this process a bit, by first creating a zipped folder with a password, then adding a whole bunch of files to it. This way, you can have one password protected folder for all your sensitive files, instead of creating a zipped folder for each file. To do so, right-click in the empty space on the desktop (or in any open folder), select New, and then click Compressed (zipped) Folder. Enter a name for the compressed folder, press ENTER, and you'll see a new folder icon marked with a zipper. Add a password like we did above. Now you can use drag and drop to move one or many files to the password protected folder.

Password Protection and Windows XP Pro

If you have Windows XP Professional, there is another option to turn on passwords for shared folders. It involves disabling the "Simple File Sharing" option (the default in XP) and then creating additional user accounts on your computer, which can be authorized to access certain shared folders with a password. It's ugly, arcane, and it doesn't really do what we want to do (add a password to a single file), so I'm not going to go into detail on this. If you're motivated and a tad geeky, you can read this additional information on password protecting a folder in XP Pro.

There are some programs available that claim to add password protection to Windows XP files and folders, but I have not tried any of them. If you have, post a comment below...