Encrypting files and folders on Windows 10 can provide an added layer of security for sensitive information. However, decrypting these files can be a tricky process, especially if you’re not familiar with the methods involved. In this article, we’ll walk you through two different methods to decrypt files on Windows 10.
Firstly, it’s important to note that you can’t encrypt a file or folder using Windows 10 Home edition. You will need at least Windows 10 Pro, which includes a program called BitLocker, to encrypt files and folders. BitLocker supersedes the other program, which was known as Encrypting File System. Regardless of which of these programs you use to encrypt your file or folder, the methods we’re going to show you in this article should help you to decrypt it.
Method 1:
Let’s say you have an encrypted file and you would like to decrypt it. What you should do is right-click on it and then click on “Properties”, then go to the “General” tab. Under the attributes, select “Advanced”, and here you should see an option called “Encrypt contents to secure data”. If it is not encrypted, you just need to uncheck this in order to decrypt it. Also, bear in mind that this procedure can only be done if you have Windows 10 Pro and not Home edition. After unchecking this, click on “OK”, then click on “Apply”, and then click on “OK”. If you have already set up a password for encrypting the file, you might have to re-enter the password in order to decrypt it.
Method 2:
The second method involves using the command prompt. First, right-click on the same file and click on “Properties” again, and find out its file type. Make a note of that, or you could simply press the Windows button and then type “note”, then enter to open a notepad file and then copy the ending and paste it in here. Then go to your full address by clicking on here, copy that as well, and then paste it in here. Then enter the forward slash and then go to this file, press F2, then press CTRL + C to copy this. Then go back to this notepad and paste the name, and delete the brackets. Now we have the full address of the file, including the file type.
Press the Windows button again or you could just click on “Start”, and now simply type “command”. After doing that, you should get an app called command prompt. Right-click on it to select “Run as administrator”. If it comes with a pop-up, click on “Yes”. Then go to the description of this video or simply type cipher space forward slash d. In front of that, we have the full address. What we need to do is to put this full address in double quotes. After enclosing the full address in the double quotes and entering this code, copy the whole command CTRL + C to copy, then come back to the command prompt, press CTRL + V to paste the code in here. Make sure the code is correct as is shown in here, and then press enter. You should get a message saying “decrypting files in folder called for”, and then if any of the files in that folder were encrypted, this code should decrypt their files in that folder.
We hope this article helps you to resolve your issue. If you have any questions, please put them in the comments below.