Remove Forgotten Password to Open Excel File or Remove Read-Only - Zip Method Without Software

In this video, I demonstrate how to remove a forgotten password from a password protected Excel file. This kind of protection either stops you from opening the Excel workbook altogether or prevents you from saving edits to the workbook by applying read-only status to the file.

To remove the file's password it is necessary to convert the Excel file to a zip folder. By extracting the contents of the zip folder you are able to edit the Workbook's xml files, which is where the code of the workbook's protection is stored. By deleting the relevant code, you get rid of the protection.

AS SOME OF YOU HAVE DISCOVERED - THIS METHOD NO LONGER WORKS FOR EXCEL 365.

This video will answer the following queries:

How do I hack an Excel password-protected file?
How do I remove password to open Excel file?
How do I remove password for Excel write access?
How do I remove password in Excel using zip?
How do I remove Excel password if forgotten?
How do I remove Excel password required to open?
How do I remove Excel password read-only?
How do I remove Excel password without software?
How do I remove Excel password to modify?
How do I remove Excel password by editing xml?
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[Afsaneh]

So smart. Love it. The quicker path is not to extract the ZIP, open the zip file, open xl folder and the workbook.xml, remove file sharing section, close and update the zip file. Rename back to the original extension.

[cashiernn]

This information is awesome. I did follow your instruction sir however when a pop-up notification says, "the compress file is invalid" or "Empty". can you help me with this, please?

[ztoldy]

Thank you. If you don't have these lines but you go into xl\worksheets\ and open the sheet.xml with an editor, delete all the lines with <sheetProtection> </sheetProtection> and <protectedRange> </protectedRange> tags, you got the same result. The other steps are the same.

[panagdimi]

What IF the file is of an older version of excel, i.e. 2003 (*.xls) which is not using XML files?!

[imvisionhoti]

Mine doesn't work. The first step gives me an error when I try to open the file for extraction via Winrara 7 Zip etc.. it says cannot open. Coz its corrupt damagef etc. Kindly help

[ck]

Has this workaround been patched by Microsoft? I just tried this and got an error message saying that the zip file is empty...

[moosankutty]

i couldn't make the zip conversion, can you please help me

[bluetaurean]

Good trick. However does not work on office 365 if the file is password protected. the unzipped file has a some encryptedpackage file. However it works for protected sheets.

[mohamednayeem]

it didnt work. I am not able to extact the zip file.. it throws me an error

[alitahall]

I needed to unlock a workbook I forgot the password for and this worked great! Thank you!

[shingalani]

My Excel 97-2003 files have an .xls extension. After following your steps, the text file that is produced results in unreadable strange characters. Any suggestions please?

[j.dasilva]

This doesnt work anymore, now those zip files return an error when the iriginal xls file has a password.

[jollyredgiant]

This was extremely helpful for me at work! Thanks man

[lesliemereminsky]

Do you have instructions to do this on a Mac?

[e.p.t.]

on 8-11-23 i tried this windows 11, excel 97 file. When I selected "send to" and selected "Compressed (zipped) folder" to created the zipped file. It created a zip file in the folder where my original copied file was located. I then did an "Extract All" on the zip file. The extract seemed to work but I could not see the 4 files ending with [content_types].xlm when I clicked the copied file. Can someone tell me why?

[vitoraduha]

this does work.
If you are doing it first time it wil take some time to figure it out but at the end it does work!!!
Thank you very much for this video (Y)

[liamyeboah]

i have tried this method to no avail. Any help please?

[anayensialfaro]

It was pefect how it worked! Thank you so much!

[Michal]

It's been patched sadly. But I guess it still works on the older versions of excel

[Pretzil]

THANKS! Also works for individually protected worksheets if you go into the xml files in the xl>worksheets folder