Problems, problems…

[Macaroni]

I am involved with a small local charity attempting to comply with GDPR.  I installed AxCrypt on my Win 7 laptop yesterday and it appeared to work OK, and seemed simple enough to use..  Today I installed it on the laptops of two (relatively non computer literate) users. Both were using Win 10, although different versions.

On the more recent version, my user managed to have two MS Word files with the same name, but one with the axx extension.  The one with the .axx extension, when right-clicked, did not show the decrypt choice.   I didn’t see haw this situation occured.  Is it possible to encrypt a file whilst it is open in Word?

On the older Win10 laptop, whenever we attempted to encrypt a Word file, AxCrypt would insist the file was in use by another process, although only File Explorer was running.

I had to abandon the use of AxCrypt on both laptops because I could not quickly resolve these issues.  Are these common, easily resolvable problems?  Does AxCrypt react badly to AntiVirus or other security software?

Thanks in advance.

[SvanteSpectator]

Hello Macaroni,

AxCrypt is really a very simple program in many ways (although complex inside regarding the crypto).

It does not do anything magic or particular with files. It encrypts them, making for example “Document.docx” become “Document-docx.axx”. It then also manages the process of opening and saving them in a relatively simple manner.

When properly installed on a computer, it will associate the “.axx”-extension with AxCrypt, enabling the right-click menu and double-click functionality.

The most common reason for this being broken is the user not fully understanding Windows file association, and reasons “I want this to open in Word, I will tell Windows to open it with Word”. There are many ways this situation can arise, but it’s the most common situation.

Another case might be when the user has downloaded the stand-alone “portable” version and never actually installed AxCrypt via the installer, which is required for Windows to be properly configured regarding the right-click menu and double-click.

The “file is in use” is most commonly caused by it being in use, often for example by the Windows viewer which refuses to release files. The cure is often to actually exit the program where it is open, not just close the document/file.

AxCrypt works well with most if not all anti-virus software, since it doesn’t do anything strange. It is in many ways very similar to compression and archive software such as WinZip and similar.

[Author]

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