Forum Discussion
Sharing Excel Spreadsheet with a password
Excel's password to open the file is pretty strong, but it's internal security has historically been pretty weak (such as worksheet protection and vba project protection). I don't know if 365 has added new features that might be useful (I've never used excel for sensitive information, so don't keep up with its security features).
If you change the .xlsx to .zip, open it, and then open the worksheet file in a text editor, you can remove the sheetprotection xml tag, save, and then change the file extension back to .xlsx. Then, open the file in excel and unhide the columns containing everyone's passwords.
Or, they can open the vba editor and execute a copy command to copy the hidden cells on sheet1 to a new sheet and expose the data that way.
JMB17 I learnt a new thing from you today. Thanks a lot for sharing your knowledge of about Excel protection vulnerability. I do not know that it is so easy to crack the password-protected feature.
AraliAlvarado From what JMB17 shares, I do not think it is a good idea to include confidential data in an Excel workbook to share at all. I just tried the first method and everything is revealed.
- You are quite welcome.