Formula Help Requested: Using Excel to figure out my password
February 21, 2016 6:40 PM   Subscribe

Okay, so I've locked myself out of One Password. Please help me set up Excel to figure out the possible permutations as notepad is driving me blind.

My password hint is something like "Boston ^". (It's not, I've changed the name of the city and the special character)

That means, to me, that my password is some permutation of:

WBUR (or wbur)
a 10 or 7 digit phone number (known to me, no other possible alternatives)
and the caret "^"

These can be in nearly ANY order.

WBUR^5551212
5555551212^wbur


Et cetera.

Is there a way I can just throw this in excel and have it spit out all of the options so I can go through and try each? What I'm actually doing is unlocking my backed up Box.com copy of it on my cell phone ... I gave up on my computer-based version a while ago (although If I can use the computer instead of the phone that would save me a lot of hassle).
posted by tilde to Computers & Internet (6 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
I don't know of a way to do this in Excel, but it's pretty straightforward to do it manually if you're systematic about it.

There are only 4 possible combinations that start with WBUR:

WBUR[7digitnumber]^
WBUR^[7digitnumber]
WBUR[10digitnumber]^
WBUR^[10digitnumber]

And then there are another 4 that start with wbur:

wbur[7digitnumber]^
wbur^[7digitnumber]
wbur[10digitnumber]^
wbur^[10digitnumber]

There are another 4 that start with the 7 digit phone number:
[7digitnumber]WBUR^
[7digitnumber]^WBUR
[7digitnumber]wbur^
[7digitnumber]^wbur

And another 4 that start with the 10 digit number:
[10digitnumber]WBUR^
[10digitnumber]^WBUR
[10digitnumber]wbur^
[10digitnumber]^wbur

And 8 that start with the caret:
^[7digitnumber]WBUR
^WBUR[7digitnumber]
^[7digitnumber]wbur
^wbur[7digitnumber]
^[10digitnumber]WBUR
^WBUR[10digitnumber]
^[10digitnumber]wbur
^wbur[10digitnumber]

That's it. Just check that the site isn't going to lock you out if you make this many password attempts.
posted by une_heure_pleine at 7:24 PM on February 21, 2016


Three items in any order, with one of those three having two variants, does not produce a large number of possibilities.

You have:
ABC
ACB
BAC
BCA
CAB
CBA

Then for "B" (the phone number), you have to try each of the 7 and 10 digit versions, so that's 12 possibilities, I think. Copy and paste the following into Excel:

ABC
ACB
BAC
BCA
CAB
CBA
ADC
ACD
DAC
DCA
CAD
CDA

Then do a find and replace for A = WBUR, B = 10 digit ph number; C = ^, D = 7 digit phone number.

That should get you your list.
posted by lollusc at 7:26 PM on February 21, 2016 [3 favorites]


You have five items: {WBUR, wbur, 10 digit #, 7 digit #, ^} and you want three of them. There are 60 possible permutations, and you can generate a text list of them here: https://www.mathsisfun.com/combinatorics/combinations-permutations-calculator.html
posted by nomis at 8:13 PM on February 21, 2016


Eh, ignore my answer, I didn't take account of the fact that you can't combine the WBUR/wbur and 10/7 digit number. You can still use that site to generate your lists but would have to repeat using the variants.
posted by nomis at 8:18 PM on February 21, 2016


Is it possible you haven't forgotten the password but rather there is a glitch that is causing 1Password to reject it? Like described here?
posted by Wretch729 at 6:44 AM on February 22, 2016


I missed that the WBUR could be capitals or lowercase. My answer still stands, but you'll need to copy/paste the whole column again and the second time replace A with "wbur".
posted by lollusc at 4:29 PM on February 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


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