The power to password protect a file on Vista is important if you want to keep personal or sensitive data from the eyes of other users. Unfortunately, Microsoft chose to restrict this technology to only the most expensive versions of its operating system. The good news is that there are a number of alternate ways to secure your private data in Windows Vista.

Tools To Password Protect Windows Vista Files

Windows Vista Starter, Home Basic, and Home Premium lack the native ability to password protect files or folders. Third party software companies, however, have created a number of capable encryption and protection utilities to fill the gap. Here are your options for file password protection:

• Simple, but expensive. If you’re lucky enough to own Vista Business, Enterprise or Ultimate, password protection is just a right click away. To protect a file, right click on it and select Properties from the menu. Select the General tab and click on the Advanced button. Check the “Encrypt contents to secure data” box and click OK.
• Safe and compressed. For other versions of Windows Vista, it is possible to password protect a compressed version of a folder. Right click a folder and select Send To from the menu. Select Compressed (Zipped) Folder and a new folder will be created with the same name and a .ZIP extension. Double click on the new folder and from the File menu, select Add a Password. Note that this will leave your original folder intact and unprotected. For the best protection, delete the original folder or back it up to another drive.
• Third party options. There are several software-based options for password protecting files and folders in Windows. AxCrypt by Axantum Software (www.axantum.com) and TrueCrypt (www.truecrypt.org) are free applications that allow you to apply password-based encryption to files, folders and disk partitions.

Primary sources: www.microsoft.com, www.pcworld.com