EASILY UNLOCK Protected Excel Sheets WITHOUT Password

Did you ever forget a password for one of your protected Excel sheets? In this video I'll show you how you can crack your protected Excel sheet. Easily remove Excel sheet protection without using any password recovery software. All you need is a ZIP program like WinZIP, WinRAR or 7-zip.

Important: Before using this trick always make a copy of the workbook that you're going to unlock.

00:00 How to Unprotect Excel Sheet
01:27 Remove Password from Excel .XML File
05:07 Wrap Up

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#excel

[knldgispwr]

I can’t begin to tell you how many hours you have saved me. I asked the coworker for an unprotected workbook of his so that I can begin making updates for Fiscal Year 2023. His response was “not my sheet, don’t have a blank unprotected one, sorry”. I knew that I could do this but I couldn’t remember what to do after the zip portion. I am subscribing to your channel in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Thank you so much. 😁

[EKUTAN]

Learning with Leila is fun. Seriously, I told my employer that l am expert in all MS suite. Well l am not, this is where I come to learn. You have been a life saver for me. Thanks again sweet lady.

[stephenkaras]

Leila you are the best!!! I was just handed a ton of work to repair in an XL spread sheet and the sheet with all the work was password protected. Just came to your YouTube page and found this clip. You continually save the day!!

[davidnetusil]

This video is absolutely wonderful. I had a file created by a recently retired colleague who could not remember the password they used. This tip saved me HOURS of work having to recreate a multi-tab workbook. Thank you so much for making and sharing.

[russraimer]

Leila, Fantastic presentation! Short and sweet! Been watching a number of your videos - thought I knew a lot about Excel - finding out there is SO MUCH more to learn! Curious how you became so knowledgeable about Excel.

[Tianablue]

I found this exact method a few years back on YouTube when I forgot the password of one of my own sheets, but this video explained it much better and always great to have a reminder! :)

[Ensavoirmoins]

Thank you Leila for this great channel. Compared to similar YT channel, you have a great sense of organization, you pay attention to the smallest details, and the way you present the toughest subject makes it easy to everyone to understand regardless of his/her level of mastery, and this is what I like about the channel. All the best.

[seapacificdesign]

Excellent work Leila! A quick note to say that you have to follow the steps EXACTLY as Leila mentions otherwise your file will get corrupted. If your file is on a Sharepoint site you will need to download it to your computer first, make a copy, rename it and when the task is complete you can upload it back to Sharepoint and it will not conflict with the previous file.

[lathikapreethi]

You always stand out from other Excel experts and Trainers! Amazingly inspiring video!

[howardnemerov]

Thank you Leila! Great step-by-step walkthrough. Fortunately, Windows 10 now handles zip natively, so I was able to edit without an extra utility. Also, a warning to those with multi-tab workbooks: You have to search every "zipped" XL file. I found some that had "protect" and some that didn't. To unlock the workbook, I had to search them all and edited about half before I could access all cells.

[kathyloveless]

Great job of explaining! I was frustrated by receiving a necessary file at a large corporation that had been locked and no one seemed to know how to unlock it. I spent days going round and round looking for the password to no avail. Your fix had me up and working within the hour (there were a lot of sheets in my file). Great job!

[SreenikethanI]

Damn, from an Excel point of view, this "Sheet protection" concept seems to be useless for proper security, unless we just want it to restrict and guide the user in general!
Amazing video!

[IvanSrb]

I forget my coworkers passwords all the time. Thanks!

[syedazher]

I had made a excel sheet about a year and half ago. and of course I had forgotten the protection password. I had to make some minor changes to the sheet as per my colleague request, and I was not able to do it. I googled it and your video was on TOP. and after getting the job done in 3-4 minutes, I know now why your spot was on the top :) 😊.
Great work Leila, Thanx

[markrodgers]

Holy COW!!! I've had a locked spreadsheet that I've used for EIGHT YEARS!!! The person who created it disappeared and NO ONE in my organization knows the password. BUT I JUST UNLOCKED IT WITH YOUR VIDEO LEILA!!!! Omg everyone is going to be blown away that I figured this out and all i did was follow these steps. Not hard at all.

[penelopechiu]

This was so helpful and easy to follow! Straight to the point and worked! Very well done. Thank you so much!!!

[dragonwario]

You're amazing. I've been needing this for weeks and you just solved it in a couple of minutes. Thank you so much. Keep it up with the great content.

[carolynklaus]

Leila Gharani I love you! This is the third time I have forgotten the password for a worksheet--and the other times were long enough ago that I had forgotten what to do. But this time I knew right where to go--your YouTube video! Very quickly, I'm back in business. Thank you ever so

[bladehenge]

An absolute lifesaver. Inherited a password protected file from a coworker who retired w/o leaving their notes and this saved me from having to remake the whole workbook from scratch!

[AtlanticZealot]

I learned some things here, thanks! It looks like the sheet file sizes are also displayed when opening the file as a zip file - I might try that to troubleshoot huge excel files to see which sheets could use some cleaning