Forum Discussion
How to unprotect Excel sheet if forgot the password
RuthDelbert For Excel 2007 and later versions, files are saved in an XML-based format. This means you can unzip the file and manually edit the XML files to remove the protection. This method requires some technical knowledge and careful handling of XML files.
How to unprotect Excel sheet without password by editing the internal xml file:
- Change the file extension of the Excel workbook from .xlsx to .zip.
- Extract the contents of the ZIP file to a folder.
- Navigate to the folder and open the xl subfolder.
- Locate the worksheets subfolder and find the XML file corresponding to the protected sheet (e.g., sheet1.xml).
- Open the XML file in a text editor (e.g., Notepad++).
- Search for the tag <sheetProtection> and delete it along with its attributes.
- Save the XML file and close the text editor.
- Compress the folder back into a ZIP file.
- Change the file extension from .zip back to .xlsx.
- Open the modified Excel file, and the sheet should be unprotected.
Thank you for the steps. This had worked for me before but if renaming the file from .XLSX to .ZIP gives you an error (unsupported format), rename it to .ARJ, and the same can be done using the BBEdit app. Simply open the ARJ file with BBEdit and follow the rest of the steps.
Thank you EnricoPenco! I had posted a similar solution where I mentioned to change the file extension to ARJ. But after reading your post, the same can be done with the standard XLSX extension. So, let me reiterate myself:
THIS IS EXCEL FOR MAC OS USERS.
- Download a FREE copy of BBEdit
- Make a copy of your password protected file: Select it, press CMD-C then CMD-V.
- Right-Click on the new file and select "Open With" then "Other..."
- On the pop-up window, next to "Enable:", change "Recommended" to "All Applications".
- Make sure NOT TO ENABLE "Always Open With".
- Select "BBEdit.app" your list of Applications.
- BBEdit will show a series of locations on the left pane. Expand "xl", and within it expand "worksheets".
- Select the "sheet" with the password.
- You can use the function to Find (CMD-F) to easily locate "<sheetProtection"
- Delete this tag from "<sheetProtection" to its tag closure "/>"
- Save the file and open it to make sure password is gone.