You have an Excel file that’s encrypted with a password and you can’t open it to view the contents inside because you don’t know the password or you’ve forgotten it. Well, Excel doesn’t really offer a command you can use to override the password and open a protected workbook. Even Microsoft doesn’t provide any such utility. So, what to do in such a situation? Is there any way to unlock or recover the Excel password?
Yes, there are several solutions to do it. Herein, you’ll get to know exactly how to open a password-protected Excel file and get to view the contents inside it. They are pretty simple methods. See them below.
It’s pretty simple to open a password-protected Excel file with the correct password. However, if you don’t remember the password or don’t own the file, one of the first things you can do is to try as many sample/common passwords as you can. Think of all kinds of frequently-used passwords you know.
There’s no risk in guessing and trying them because even with many failed attempts, the excel file won’t get locked. If this method doesn’t work, try the next one.
You can use an Excel password recovery tool like FoneGeek for Excel to open your password-protected Excel file when you don’t know the password.
FoneGeek for Excel is the best and most effective Excel password recovery software on the market. It can certainly unlock the encrypted Excel file, plus it’s quite fast with a 100% success rate. No data in the Excel file gets lost and you can upload Excel files of any size - there’s no limitation.
Remove Excel Password with FoneGeek for Excel
You can unprotect the password for an Excel file using this option on FoneGeek for Excel. It easily and quickly removes password protection with just a single click. Moreover, it can be used to remove restrictions from Excel sheets and workbooks, allowing you to modify, copy or print the contents of the Excel sheet or workbook.
Here are the steps to unprotect an Excel sheet without password:
Unlock Excel by Recovering the Opening Password
FoneGeek for Excel is also capable of recovering the password used to protect an Excel file or workbook to allow you to unlock it. The program features 4 attack types which you can choose from to help you. They include:
Another viable way you can open password protected excel files is by changing the file extension of the Excel document. Excel is technically a form of a zip file that’s based on Open Office Document standard, meaning it comprises different worksheets plus a configurable XML file.
The XML file carries the encryption key. You can edit the content in this XML file to remove the password protection from the Excel document. From there, you’ll no longer need a password to open the encrypted Excel document.
Note: The only unfortunate thing is that you can only use this method on old Excel files. It won’t work for anything after office 2010.
Follow the steps below to open password protected excel files by modifying file extensions.
This is a totally free and secure method. There’s no change done on the data in the file. So, give it a try. If it doesn’t work, try the next method.
You can equally use the VBA code to unlock a password-protected excel spreadsheet. Developed by Microsoft, Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is generally a programming language that’s provided along with Microsoft Office.
It’s used for a wide range of activities including producing charts, evaluating scientific data, predicting and budgeting, and also maintaining lists of various objects. More importantly, it can be used to unprotect Excel spreadsheets. It’s quite effective, simple to use, and works smoothly with all Microsoft Excel versions.
As long you follow the steps above your Excel file will be unprotected using the VBA code.
The last approach is to open your encrypted excel file online. You can use an online excel password remover tool like Password-online.com which is a paid service that assists with decrypting of passwords for various types of files such as Excel, Word, PowerPoint, PDF, 7zip, and more. Each successful decryption is charged around 10 Euros.
You need to upload the locked Excel file to the Password-online servers to use their service which can be an issue, especially if the file has sensitive data and you don’t want it shared with others. The service also has limited the file size you can upload to 500MB. Anything larger than that will need to be split to upload it.
Once the decryption is successful, the service will prompt you to make the 10 Euros payment, after which you download the unprotected Excel file.
Now you know how to open password protected excel file if password forgotten, but how do you open an encrypted excel document with a known password? Well, it’s pretty easy and fast. You just put your password in Excel, then the file will open right away.
These steps are similar for all Excel versions, it doesn’t matter whether it’s Excel 2007 or 2016.
It’s not uncommon to end up with an Excel file that can’t open since it’s corrupted. The situation can even get worse if you haven’t backed up your data already. This doesn’t mean that you are permanently locked out though. You can use Microsft Office repair software. It’s basically the best and simplest method that allows you to easily access corrupted/fault files.
One of the primary techniques of the software you can use is Open and Restore method. It helps repair the corrupted Excel file manually, plus it doesn’t need a backup. Follow these steps:
You shouldn’t have any difficulty now when it comes to opening password-protected excel file, whether you have the password or not. We’ve listed several effective methods above that you can try. Choose the one that you think is suitable for you, although all of them should work. You can go with FoneGeek for Excel if you want a quick and safe process without much hassle on your end. It will just take one or two clicks to open your password-protected excel file.
Joan J. Mims is interested in researching all tips about iPhone, iPad and Android. He loves to share useful ideas with all users.
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