Forum Discussion
How to unprotect Excel sheet if forgot the password
I recently encountered a problem and hope to get your help. I set a protection password for an Excel file before. Now I want to modify some data, but I found that I forgot Excel password. I wonder if...
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.