How-to: Manual (recovery) decryption of files

The recommended procedure is to remove an agent from a machine only after all files have been decrypted. This is the reason that removal of the agent requires a removal key. However, in case encrypted files are left behind (agent was removed and for some reason cannot be reinstalled) this procedure can recover these encrypted files.

1. Under Admin – General Setting disable “Protect Agent from Tampering”.
   
2. Under Admin – General Setting click “Encryption key”.
   
   IMPORTANT: DO NOT CHANGE THE KEY!
   You will need the key and the Customer ID in the next steps. Also make sure you copy the key in its entirety and without mistakes!
3. Disable the Actifile agent by stopping the Actifile Update service (first) followed by the Actifile Agent service.
4. Navigate to X:\Program Files (x86)\Actifile Agent. Start the application AFDecryptor.exe.
5. Select the files or directories you wish to decrypt, the extensions of the files and insert the tenant number and Password from step 2 above.
   
6. Restart the Actifile services in step 3 to resume normal operation.

Note: depending on the configuration, the decrypted files may be re-encrypted. Make a copy of the files (in step 5) where Actifile will not encrypt them again.