With my new 2 month old pc I figured it was time to upgrade Office as I
was still using Office 95(if it's not broken...). Now I have Office 2003.

I have a few files password protected. I recall in the old Excel there
was a simple program you could download and install that would get by the
passwords(note I never tried it). It never really mattered to me since
this is a home PC and it's not all that confidential info.

Now I see in Excel 2003 they have all different Encryption Types under
the Advanced Tab when you set up a file password. The default seems to be
"Office 97/2000 Compatible".

How secure is this? Is there a program readily available on the WWW to
break this? Is there a better encryption type from the list I should
select?

TIA!