The Encrypting File System (EFS) is an organ of the NTFS (New Technology File System) system. You can use it on Windows 2000, Windows XP Professional, Windows Server 2003 and newer operating system issued by Microsoft.
With some methods discussed below, you can decrypt a file/folder on any specified above Windows
People who don’t have a proper key cannot read/open the encrypted file/folder. Hence, if someone has that data in physical but he has not authorization then he’ll not be able to read that data, which will give us an advantage. I hope you already know how to encrypt files. Now, let us talk about the decryption of files which are already encrypted.
Let’s take a look at those two methods to Decrypt the files/folders.
Using file Properties with Advanced File Attributes
- First of all, right-click on the encrypted file and then click on the ‘Properties’ option. Now, after opening the Properties window, click on the ‘Advanced’ button followed by the Attributes section.
- Now a new window will open named as Advanced Attributes. There, you’ll find a section named ‘Compressor Encrypt Attributes’. Hereafter you can Find and deselect this ‘Encrypt contents to secure data’ option. Then click ‘OK’ then it’ll further ask you if you want to make the changes to the folder only or to its subfolder and files. Select your option & click ‘Apply’ and then click ‘OK’ button.
Using a Cipher Command Line
- Start by pressing the WINKEY + X button combo or right-click on the Start button and click on the Command Prompt & “Admin” or just type your keyboard for “CMD” in the Cortana search box after that right-click on the electronic communication icon and click on “Run as Administrator“.
- Now, type the following command: cipher /d “x”
- In case to decrypt a file, type the file with its extension, rather of this, in the case of a folder, folder name only can work easily. For example, to decrypt a file stored in D:/Test named as ‘fb.txt’, use the command:
- cipher /d “D:/Test/fb.txt”
- To decrypt a folder stored in D:/ named as ‘me’, use the following command:
- cipher /d “D:/me”
- Exit and then Restart your computer for the changes to take place.
- That’s all!