Knowing how to remove a password in Excel. How to remove a password from an Excel file: several simple methods. Removing protection from the sheet

If necessary, repeat with the remaining sheets.

Now you need to put the changed files back into the document. To do this, go to the folder with the Excel document.xlsx, right-click on it and select:

“7-Zip -> Open archive”

An archiver window with the contents will open.

Go to the archiver window: "\xl\worksheets\", drag our modified sheet files (those in which we erased the password lines) into this window with the mouse, agree to the replacement warning and close the archiver window.

Now the password protection of the sheet is removed and you can do whatever you want with the document. If necessary, the file can be saved back to the old .xls format through the Microsoft Office menu:

It may seem that this is a long and tedious process, but in fact there is nothing complicated here and the whole procedure takes one minute, or even less.

Attention!

In order to protect data both from unauthorized persons and from their own accidental actions, users can install protection on Excel documents. Alas, not everyone knows how to remove such protection in order to gain access to information, including the ability to edit it. And what should we do if the file was received from another user who forgot to give us the password, or we accidentally forgot (lost) it? Let's take a closer look.

Note that there are two ways to lock an Excel document: protect a sheet or a workbook. Accordingly, this will determine what actions you need to take to unlock it.

Removing protection from the sheet

A security password can be set not only for the entire document, but also for a specific sheet. In this case, the user will be able to see the contents of the sheet, but he will not be able to edit the information.

To remove sheet protection, perform the following steps.

Changing the file code to remove sheet protection

This method is needed in cases where the password was lost or was not transferred along with the file from another user. It only works for those documents that are protected at the level of individual sheets, and not the entire book, because we need to get to the menu "File", which is not possible when password protecting the entire document.

To remove protection, you must perform the following sequence of actions:

1. Go straight to step 4 if the file extension is XLSX (Excel workbook). If the document format is XLS (Excel 97-2003 workbook), you must first resave it with the desired extension. To do this, go to the menu "File".
   
2. Select from the list on the left "Save as", then on the right side of the window click the button "Review".
   
3. In the window that appears, select any convenient location to save the file, set the format “Excel workbook” and click OK.
   
4. Open in Conductor a folder with a document in XLSX format (newly saved or originally available). To enable file extensions, go to the tab "View", where we enable the desired option in the tool group “Show or hide”.
   Note: given in this step and below actions in operating system described on Windows example 10.
5. Right-click on the document and in the list that opens, click on the command "Rename"(or you can just press the key F2, after selecting the file).
   
6. Instead of expansion "xlsx" we write "zip" and confirm the change.
   
7. The system will now identify the file as an archive, the contents of which can be opened by double-clicking the left mouse button.
   
8. In the folder that opens, go to the directory “xl”, then - “worksheets”. Here we see files in the format XML, which contain information about the sheets. You can open them using the usual Notepad.
   Note: in Windows 10, you can set the default program by file type in the system settings (launched by pressing the keys Win+I), In chapter “Applications”, then - “Default apps” – “Selecting default applications for file types”.
   
9. After successfully opening the file, we need to find the phrase in its contents "sheetProtection". To do this, we will use the search, which can be launched either through the menu “Edit”(paragraph "Find"), and by pressing the key combination Ctrl+F.
   
10. Enter the desired phrase and press the button “Find next”.
11. Once you have found the desired match, you can close the search window.
    
12. We erase the phrase and everything that relates to it (between the opening and closing tags).
    
13. On the menu "File" select a team "Save as"(or press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+S).
    
14. It is not possible to save the document immediately in the archive. Therefore, we do this in any other place convenient for us on the computer, without changing the name and specifying the extension "xml"(file type must be selected – "All files").
    
15. We just copied this file to a folder “worksheets” our archive (with replacement of the original one).
    Note: record "sheetProtection" present in all password-protected sheet files. Therefore, we perform the steps described above to find and delete it with all other files XML in folder “worksheets”.
16. Again we go to the folder containing our archive and change the extension back from "zip" on "xlsx" by renaming.
    
17. Now you can open the file and safely edit it. You will not need to enter a password to remove protection.
    

Third-party programs for removing passwords

To remove your password, you can use third-party programs. At the same time, it is worth remembering the possible risks associated with downloading, installing and using non-standard operating system tools and Excel.

If you nevertheless decide to take advantage of this opportunity, you can pay attention to a fairly popular program Accent OFFICE Password Recovery .

Link to the official page with the program: https://passwordrecoverytools.com/office-password.asp.

Please note that to gain access to all functions of the program you need to purchase a license. A demo version is available to try out the application; however, it does not allow you to delete passwords.

Conclusion

Protecting a book or individual sheet is extremely useful features Excel programs when you need to protect information from unauthorized persons or, for example, protect yourself from accidental changes to important read-only data. But sometimes the opposite need arises - to withdraw earlier established protection. This can be done in different ways, depending on how it was installed. And even if you have forgotten the password, the lock can be removed, however, only if the code was set for individual sheets and not the entire book.

Good afternoon! If you have protected your MS Excel 2007-2010 sheets from changes and accidentally forgot your password, then the problem can be solved quite simply, even without using third party programs. I will describe here two ways to do this. They use the same method, only two are used for this purpose. various programs: WinRAR and Total Commander.

Method for removing protection from an Excel file (using WinRAR):

1. change the file extension XLSX to ZIP
2. open ZIP file winrarОМ
3. We look for the XML file along the path “File.xlsx/xl/worksheets/sheet1.xml” or “sheet2″. Below these names are the pages of the book.
4. We extract the xml file from the XLSX container and open it with a text editor.
5. We look for the substring “sheetProtection” in the text.
6. If one is found. This means that the sheet contains protection; if there is no such block, then there is no protection. We delete the entire block in tags, for example
   sheetProtection password=»JHVB76JHGV6″ sheet=»1″ objects=»1″ scenarios=»1″ selectLockedCells=»1″ selectUnlockedCells=»1″. (from "" including the parentheses themselves)
7. Save the file to its original location.
8. Change the file extension and open with using Excel 2007 - 2010 in the usual way.

Method for removing protection from an Excel file (using Total Commander):

1. Open a file through TotalCommander - place the cursor on it and press Ctrl+PageDown. An archive will open (which is the *.xlsx format), in which you will see several folders and files
2. Along the path “.../xl/worksheets/sheetN.xml”, where N is the sheet number, i.e. 1,2,3... select a Sheet protected by a password (or carry out the following procedure one by one for all password-protected sheets).
3. Extract the file “sheetN.xml” from the XLSX container to any temporary folder and open it with a text editor (F4 in Total Commander).
4. Using a text search (Ctrl+F4) we look for “password”.
5. The editor finds the XML container. (Your values ​​may be different)
6. Remove the entire “sheetProtection” container from “<» до «>».
7. Save the file (Ctrl + S).
8. We copy the file back to the XLSX container and replace the old one (just in case, you can first save the original one somewhere else in case you need to roll back.

That's all. The protection from the sheet has been removed. You can use your file!

How to remove protection from Excel sheet online? Today we will tell you how to remove protection from a sheet in Excel, from the simplest options to a small hack.

And so simple methods when we put a password on the sheet ourselves, or we know the password. In versions of Excel 2007-2010, open required file in Excel, go to the Review tab and select “Unprotect sheet” in the window that appears, enter our password and enjoy the work.

In older versions of Excel, go to the menu, select the “Service” item, then “Protection” in it and the next step click on “Unprotect sheet”, enter the password again and work.

But what to do when we have forgotten the password, or are using a document that we did not create, but need to work with it. Let's get to the interesting stuff...

And so any Excel file (Excel) is essentially an archive that contains different files in xml format, we will do magic with them.

The first thing we do is change the file extension from xlsx to zip. This can be done simply by changing the file name and writing it to zip after the dot.

The next step is to go into it and look for all xml files. You need to open it using notepad, and already inside them we look for the “sheetProtection” values, it can look like this: sheetProtection password = "CV1ACV1" sheet = "1" objects = "1" scenarios = "0" selectLockedCells = "1" selectUnlockedCells = " 1". I’ll say right away that it won’t be in all files, but this is exactly our password, and it will definitely be found in one if the sheet is password-protected.

When we have found the value we need, we delete everything in quotes and the quotes themselves, save the file, rename it again, but now from the zip format to the format with the xlsx extension. We launch the file and work without any passwords.
Method number 1:

Using the program: Excel Password Viewer, open the file for which you need to find out the password value. (I don’t provide a link, search in Google search)

The program displays the password that is on the sheet in the Excel document: In my case it was: 622662

T.K. The file was created in Excel 2003, so to unlock it you need to do the following:

We open it in Excel 2010 (although there is nothing else on the server) – Review – Unprotect the sheet and enter given password in pop-up window: 622662

We remove the sheet protection by entering the password identified by the utility

Problem solved.

Method number 2:

Because file in Excel format 2003, then open it in Office Excel 2010 and resave it in a new format - xlsx, because Excel 2010 files are converted containers. To open them you need to perform fairly simple steps. Below are all the steps.

Resaving a 2003 Excel document into Excel 2010

I change the file resolution from xlsx to zip:

First you need to enable the display of file extensions, this is done like this:

Start – Computer – Organize – View – Menu Bar – Tools – Folder Options – View – uncheck the item:

Hide extensions for registered file types
After which it will be possible to change the file extension, select the file, press it, or right-click on it “Rename”, or press the F2 key and rename it after the dot symbol.

Previously: Vacation schedule of the commercial department_old.xlsx
New: Commercial department vacation schedule_old.zip
The next step is to open the document container with the archiver manager and follow the path: /xl/worksheets/sheet1.xml,

Start – All Programs – 7-Zip – 7-Zip File Manage

I open a container with 7Zip archiver Excel document

where sheet1.xml is the sheet from which we reset the password.

I extract this file “sheet1.xml” from this container, for example, into the working directory.

I extract this file “sheet1.xml” from this container

And then we open it with a text editor, in my case I always use Notepad++ and through the search (Ctrl + F) we look for the first occurrence of the word: sheetProtection

looking for the first occurrence of the word: sheetProtection

I delete this line:

After through file manager In FreeCommander, I open the directory where the sheet1.xml file is located on the left side, and open the zip archive on the right side and drag this file into the open archive.

The next step is to rename the zip container file back to xlsx

Previously: Commercial department vacation schedule_old.zip
New: Commercial department vacation schedule_old.xlsx
After these actions, the sheet protection is deactivated.

We open the file: and it opens and now the ability to make changes is activated.

The document's Excel sheet is now unprotected

To encrypt Excel, you need to click File - Details - Encrypt with password in the toolbar.

A small window will open in which you will need to write a password and click OK. Another window will open in which you will need to enter the same password again for confirmation. After this, to set a password on Excel, you will need to close it and confirm saving the changes. Now, when opening a file, you will need to enter a password, otherwise you will not see what is in this file.

To remove the password from protecting an Excel sheet, you need to know the password.
To remove the password from an Excel file, you will first need to open it using the password, and then click File - Details - Encrypt with password. A window will open in which you will need to remove the protection from Excel by deleting the password so that the password field remains blank and then click OK.

To protect Excel from copying, click File in the toolbar and select Save As.

In Excel, password protection is triggered via File
A window called Saving Document will open. In this window, you need to click on Service and select the item from the list that opens Common parameters.

Excel Password Protection is in General Options
A window called General Settings will open in which there are two lines in which passwords are entered.

When setting an Excel password, you need to write it down somewhere so you don’t forget it
If you enter the password only in the first line, the file will be opened only with the password, but the documents can be changed.

If you enter the password in the second line, the file will open without a password, but it will not be possible to save this document with any changes made to it, but it will be possible to save this document with the changes under a different name. A saved document under a different name will be password protected only for opening the file, and there will no longer be a password for copy protection.

To remove protection in Excel, you will need to click the file again and select Save As, and then in the window called Saving Document, click Tools and select General Options from the list that opens. A window will open called General Settings in which you need to remove the protection in Excel by deleting all passwords in the form of dots so that the fields are blank and click OK.

In some cases, it is necessary to protect Excel from editing and copying but still allow data to be entered into some cells. To do this, select the cells in which you want to enter data, hover the cursor over them and press the right mouse button. Will open context menu in which you need to select Format Cells. A window called Format Cells will open.

You need to remove Excel protection for the cells you selected.
In this window, on the Protection tab, uncheck the Protected cell box and click OK. After that, on the toolbar in Excel, go to the Review tab and click on Protect Sheet.

A window called Sheet Protection will open.
In this window, you need to uncheck all the boxes except for the Select unlocked cells item, and enter a password in the window to disable the sheet protection. By clicking the OK button, another window will open in which you need to enter the same password for confirmation and click OK. After this, it will be impossible to make any changes on this sheet, and it will also be impossible to select except those cells from which you previously removed the protection in the Format Cells window.
To unprotect an Excel sheet, go to the Review tab and on this tab click Unprotect Sheet.

Shows how to remove password from Excel sheet
A window called Unprotect Sheet will open. Now, in order to unprotect a sheet in Excel, you just need to enter a password and click OK. This way you can easily remove the password from Excel, and if necessary, you will need to set it again. However, if you close Excel and do not agree to save the changes, you will not be able to remove the password from Excel and the protection will remain enabled.

Sometimes there are times when we work with important documents and don't want anyone to see them. Or, at the very least, we prohibit editing the content without our knowledge. But, as practice shows, if such files are not opened for a long time, the owner himself may forget the access code. In this article we will look at how to remove protection from a sheet in Excel without knowing the password.

This is not about hacking other people's documents. We will work with what we have on our computer.

When you open a protected document, you will see the following.

The toolbar will be inactive. File modification and almost all functions are unavailable. Try clicking somewhere and typing something on the keyboard.

The selected cell will be inactive and editing will not be possible. The following error will appear.

In order to unlock a document in Excel, you need to perform the following steps.

1. Click on the “File” menu item.

1. In the window that appears, click on the “Unprotect” link.

1. Immediately after this you will be asked to enter your password. If you don’t know it, you won’t be able to remove the protection.

A similar window can be called through another menu. To do this you need to follow a few simple steps.

1. Go to the “Review” tab and click on the “Unprotect Sheet” button.
2. The result will be exactly the same.

In this case, the book is available for reading, but you cannot change anything. It is worth noting that sometimes, if the maximum file protection is not set, Excel program allows you to copy the contents of cells.

Try selecting something and pressing the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + C. The active range will immediately be highlighted with a dotted frame. This means that the ability to copy is not disabled.

Open a new document and press the Ctrl + V keys. The data will be transferred perfectly and there is no need to hack anything.

How to remove protection in Excel 2003

The steps described above are suitable for new versions of Excel. In the old one, the operating principle is slightly different. When opening a file, many functions will also be unavailable.

In order to remove the lock, you need to perform the following steps.

1. Click on the “Service” menu item.
2. Then select "Protection".
3. After that - “Unprotect sheet”.

1. Immediately after this you will be asked to enter your security key.

How to remove a password

It doesn't matter what you're trying to do - hack someone else's document or open your own old file- in any case, you will have to do the same thing. There is no difference for the program and it does not understand who the owner is. You end up trying to bypass the security.

In fact, everything is very simple. To do this, you need to perform the following steps.

1. Most likely, your operating system does not display file extensions. To enable them, follow a few simple steps:
   1. Open File Explorer.
   2. Go to the View tab.
   3. Check the box next to the appropriate item.

1. Then change the extension of your file from XLSX to ZIP.

1. To do this, click on the file and press the F2 key. After you change the ending of the document and press the Enter button, you will see the following window. Click on the "Yes" button.

1. Your file now has a new icon because Windows system thinks it's an archive.

1. Open this file (but do not extract it!). Go to the "xl" folder.

1. Then in "worksheets".

1. A list of files for each sheet will appear in this folder. Click on it with the mouse and drag it into Explorer.

1. Then right-click on this file. In the menu that appears, select “Edit”.

1. As a result, a window like this will appear.

1. Press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + F. Enter the word "sheetProtection" there. Then click on the “Find Next” button.

1. If the file is saved in Excel 2013 or 2016, you will see the following.

1. In the 2007 program, this tag is much shorter, and the type of encryption is simpler.

1. We remove everything contained in the sheetProtection tag. In the case of the example, you need to delete this piece.

1. Then save the document by pressing the hot keys Ctrl + S. We transfer this file back (from Explorer to the archiver).