How to Remove, Crack, or Break a Forgotten Excel XLS Password. Have you forgotten your Excel password for a workbook or sheet? Or has someone left your office and they forgot to unlock an Excel workbook with a password set on it?

If you’re stuck with an XLS file with a password that you need to break or crack, you can try out a small little utility that just might be able to get you back into your Excel file. Remove Excel Workbook/Worksheet Passwords. Excel Password Remover 2. Excel 2. 01. 0 or earlier workbook or sheet. However, you still have to be able to open the file itself.

If the file is protected in that you cannot even open the file without typing a password, I’ll mention another program that you can use to crack that Excel password. However, for most Excel password protection, it’s usually on the workbook or sheet so that someone can view the file, but not make structural changes to the file or changes to the cells. If this is your case, download the add- in and double- click on it. Excel will open and you’ll be asked whether to enable or disable the macros associated with the add- in. Of course, enable it.

Version for Excel 2016 on Mac computers. Also works in Excel 2010 on Windows. Not tested yet in Excel 2011 on Mac. Instant delivery (download page after purchase. You can protect a sensitive or confidential document by using a password to help prevent others from changing or even opening your document. Important: Protecting a worksheet is not the same as protecting an Excel file or a workbook with a password. See below for more information: To lock your file so that.

Then go ahead and open the Excel workbook that has the password on it that you would like to get rid of. There will be two new menu options under Tools, called Unprotect Sheet and Unprotect Workbook. Note that you can also open the workbook first and then double- click on the add- on to get the new menu options. I created a test workbook and protected both the sheet and the workbook with a simple password at first. The program worked perfectly and it removed the protection very quickly!

However, I decided to see how well it worked with a fairly complex password set to the workbook! I used 9 character password that had a combination of uppercase, lowercase, numbers and a symbol to put the Excel password remover to the test and I was quite surprised that it actually managed to crack it after about 2 minutes! Not bad at all! What’s really surprising is that you can break a password of any length using this add- in for all versions from Excel 9.

Excel 2. 01. 0. I also used a 1. Why so fast and why doesn’t it matter how complicated the password is? Unfortunately, the password is only as safe as the amount of encryption used to store the password. The encryption is weak in Excel and therefore passwords can be easily cracked no matter how complicated or how long they are. If you’re using the Excel 2. Adobe Livecycle Designer Edit Forms on this page. Straxx and three options: Unprotect sheet, Unprotect workbook and Unprotect all. The last one is for the PRO version only, which you have to pay for.

Free Excel password recovery software. This free software is designed to recover Excel file open passwords. Although Excel includes several different password types. How to repair Excel file online. Excel Repair Kit developed for fixing damaged Microsoft Excel worksheets and workbooks.

The PRO version is also the only version that will work on Excel 2. Excel 2. 01. 6 files.

You’ll also need the PRO version if you want to use the program on a Mac computer. It’s $2. 8 for the Windows version and $2. Mac version. You can purchase those here.

Remove Excel Protection and Remove VBA Passwords. Now if you’re trying to crack the password that is needed to open the Excel file itself, you will have to try out some other programs, which unfortunately are not free like the one above, however, there are your best chance at getting into that Excel file. For Excel 2. 00. 3 and earlier, the password to open the file can be cracked instantly. For Excel 2. 00. 7 and above, the password to open an Excel file is stored more securely than the workbook and worksheet passwords and therefore can’t be cracked instantly, but has to be done using normal brute force dictionary attacks, etc. Excel Password Recovery Lastic will not only remove or recover worksheet and workbook passwords, it’ll also recover the password to open an Excel document and VBA project passwords too. Not only that, but you can specify a directory and the program will scan all Excel files in the directory, find all passwords in each document and crack them for you.

The program will set you back $2. It’s only worth it if you really need to gain access to an important Excel file that is password protected. Like I mentioned earlier, though, this program can crack any password associated with an Excel 2. It cannot recover the password for Excel 2.

It can remove Excel passwords all the way up to Excel 2. Here is a chart on what the program can and can’t do and for which version of Excel. Excel Key also recovers all types of passwords for Excel spreadsheet files including sheet, workbook, file open, etc. This program also works up to Excel 2. Excel. In addition, it also has methods for attempting to crack an open file password for Excel 2. You can download a demo of the program that will only display the first three characters of the password, however, this might be enough to jog some people’s memory! If you still can’t remember, you can buy it for $3.

The program has 9 built- in dictionaries for performing brute- force attacks, though you should know that the program will only be able to check about 4. PC. This may sound like a lot, but for a very complex password, it means the program may never be able to crack the password. Again, this is only for the open file password on Excel 2. If you need to crack an Excel VBA password, you should check out VBA Key from the same company. It supports all office products including Word, Excel, Access, etc for VBA password recovery. It also supports multilingual passwords.

It also costs $3. Online Excel Cracking Tools. If you can’t get your Excel 2.

Pricing varies by site and which options you choose. Here are two other online Excel password recovery tools you can check out: http: //www. Hopefully, one of the tools above will get you into your password- protected Excel file!

Any other Excel password recovery tool you use that you would want to mention?