I have a user in a table with a password. If I browse the table the password is encrypted.

I have a small little program which looks for that user and I have entered the password
in the program. This will then tell me if the user is in the system. When I state that the password in the table=password from my program. I get my userdefined messagebox stating the password is not correct.

Therefore is it possible to authenticate a password against an encrypted password. For example
for the user Neil the table looks like:

Username Password

NEIL wjfhsdgsd

But I know the password is 'HOWAREYOU'

Therefore is it possible to say if tablename.password='HOWAREYOU' and the two are matched or do I have to decrypt the password in some way.

Many Thanks