Excel: Forgotten the password for sheet protection

The password for the sheet protection in Excel is easily forgotten. To be able to edit the table again, the sheet protection must be removed. We show you a trick how you can remove the password for it.

Forgotten password: Unprotect sheets in Excel

To open the spreadsheet you need the unpacking programme 7-Zip or WinRAR.

• Right click on the file name and select “Rename”.

• Delete the file extension “xlsx” and enter “zip” instead.

• Tip: If you do not see the file extension, click on “View” in Explorer and check “File name extension”.

• Open the table with a “right click” via the menu “7-Zip” – “Open”.

• Open the folder “xl” in 7-Zip and then “worksheets”.

• Here you may find several files with the name sheet stands for a digit).

• Copy the file sheet1.xml onto the desktop.

Step 2: Remove the password/sheet protection

To remove the password from the Excel spreadsheet, open the file “sheet1.xml” with a text editing programme such as Wordpad.

• Open the sheet file and search for the term “protection” [CTRL] + [F].

• The passage you are looking for starts with “” (see picture). Delete this passage completely.">

• Save the file and copy it into the archive (Excel file opened with 7-Zip).

• Confirm the copying process with “Yes” and then close 7-Zip.

Finally, rename the changed file from “zip” to “xlsx”. Now you can open the file again without sheet protection.