Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “How to Break Password Protection from a Protected Excel Sheet”.
In this article, i will show you how to break the password protection, that’s on a protected excel sheet, and this is actually a more common problem than you might think. What happens is sometimes excel. Users want to protect their data so that someone else doesn’t accidentally delete. Key information, and so they decide to temporarily protect a sheet and they’ll go here to review protect sheet. If you want to learn the right way to do that, you should watch my tutorial on that subject, but there’s another way to do it as well.
You can right click here on the spreadsheet name and choose protect sheet, and then here you can put in a password so i’ll, just type in a password click. Ok and then it wants me to confirm that password by entering it again, i click ok. So now this data is protected. If someone tries to type over it, it doesn’t let them.
If i try to type over it. It doesn’t. Let me so people will do this thinking they’re just going to do it temporarily, but then, when it comes time for them to again use their own spreadsheet, they go here to review unprotect sheet or they right-click unprotect sheet, and they get this pop-up asking for the Password and many times, people just can’t remember what the password is and so at that point they’re locked out of their own spreadsheet. Let’S look at how to fix this, i’m going to go ahead and save my locked sheet that maybe i’ve forgotten the password for and i’ll x out of excel at this point, and here is the file it’s on my desktop now, if your file is not on Your desktop, that’s, okay! You would just need to find the file.
Where is it saved on your computer and just go to that place now? What can i do to break the password protection? Well, the first thing i would recommend is that you duplicate this file so that, if you make a mistake, it doesn’t ruin your original file. One way to do that is to right click on the desktop and create a new folder and i’ll just call it breaking password and then i’ll right click on my file and copy it and then i’ll double click on my folder right click and paste. Now because i named it with such a long name, i’m gon na have to stretch this out so that i can see the full name now.
The next step is to change the file extension for this file right now, it’s an xlsx file, an excel spreadsheet file, but the way my computer is set up right now. I can’t even see that extension and so i’m going to click off of the file. I don’t want it to be selected at this point, just click away from it and then i’ll go here to the file, tab and i’ll go to change, folder and search options and i’ll click on the view. Tab and if you browse down the page, a ways there’s a check mark here where it says hide extensions for known file types, so i don’t want to do that. I want to be able to see the extension, so i uncheck the box. Click apply.
Click! Ok! Now, in my folder here i can see dot xlsx at this point. I’M just going to right. Click on that and rename the file extension i’ll highlight xlsx, delete it and i’ll replace it with zip tap enter on the keyboard, and i get a warning. Am i sure i want to change it? Yes, and what this has done is it’s converted this excel spreadsheet, into a zipped folder. So now, if i double click on that folder, it opens it up and i can see the contents of what is now a zipped folder, i’ll double click on xl and next i’ll. Double click on worksheets, and here it lists all of the sheets in this excel spreadsheet, and i only had one sheet one i’ll double click on that. How do i want to open this file, i’ll open it with notepad? So i double click on notepad and it gives me the code for this document. If i look closely in the code, it should have the word protection in it and to help me see this better. I’M going to click on format, word wrap and then i’m going to hold ctrl on the keyboard and tap f to search for protection there it is.
I can cancel out of that search now and i’m going to click just to the left of this less than symbol next to the word sheet, protection, i’ll click and drag and i’ll highlight all of the data in that line of code. All the way through to the greater than symbol that’s found here and then i’ll, just tap the delete key or the backspace key to get rid of that line of code. Now i can go to file and save, and i’m going to save it to that same breaking password, folder click save now i can close out of that file. So now i have two sheet ones. I have this one. This is the original that still has the password protection on it, but if i back out by clicking this back button clicking it again and again, you can see that outside the zipped folder, i have the new sheet one with the password broken. So i need to get that inside the zipped folder and have it replace the sheet one: that’s there to do this, i’m going to right click on the folder click open in new window. So now i have a window with the contents of the zipped folder and i have another window with the new sheet one with the password broken, i’m going to double click on excel, double click on worksheets and i’m just going to right. Click on the password protected sheet, click delete, yes and then i’ll just drag the new sheet1 in to replace the old sheet one. At this point, we don’t need this folder anymore, i’ll x, out of it, and so here we have the folder that i’ve been working in, and this is that same folder, but we’re looking at the contents of the folder at this point, i’ll right click on my File, let me expand that, so you can see it better, but i’ll right, click on it and i’ll rename it back to being an excel file, so dot xlsx tap enter on the keyboard. I get a warning. I click yes, so this is restored. Now, to being simply an excel spreadsheet, let’s open it up and see if it’s still password protected, i’m going to click on stevie’s, name here and start typing and as you can see, it is no longer password protected. I can change the data.
I can right click here on the spreadsheet name, and you can see that it doesn’t say unprotect sheet. It says protect sheet, so the protection has been broken off of this spreadsheet, thanks for watching. I hope you found this tutorial to be helpful. If you did please like follow and subscribe, and when you do click the bell so you’ll be notified.
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