Forum Discussion
How to unprotect Excel sheet if forgot the password
I found this post from search engine and tried a couple of answers shared by others in this thread. However,
most of them were not working. Fortunately, I recovered the password successfully thanks to the reply made
by LindaHamilto.https://www.softfixnow.com/how-to-unprotect-excel-sheet
P.S. for strong open password, you have to wait sometime to finally retrieve the password and unprotect the
sheet afterwards.
You don't need to change the file extension to zip or arj or whatever.
You can just right click the xlsx file and choose to open it with a ZIP editor.
I use and recommend 7-zip.
Thereafter, the procedure is the same as explained by EdwardGreen and ToddSumrall, i.e.:
- Find the directory called \xl\worksheets\ and spot the (first) XML file related to the sheet you want to unlock.
- Right-click the XML file and choose EDIT -> your text editor will open the XML file.
- Inside the XML file, find the "sheetProtection" tag and entirely delete it (i.e. from the "<" symbol just before "sheetProtection", to the nextcoming ">" symbol, both included).
- Save the XML file
- Close the XML file and when prompted, confirm you want to reload the modified xml file into the xlsx archive.
Just want to drop a thankyou for this one. I knew how to do it like this but only by saving it as a zip etc. and going around the houses.
Good straight to the point tip with any easy explanation not often found on the internet.
Thanks.