I found a pretty easy way of disabling the password protection in the new Excel Worksheet files (XLSX) used by Excel 2007 and 2010. Just follow these simple steps:
- Change the file extension from .XLSX to .ZIP
- Extract the file to a folder with your favorite unzipper (7-Zip is what I used)
- Go to the xlworksheet sub-folder that you just extracted
- There should be one or more files named like: sheet1.xml (sheet2.xml, etc). Inside of one of those files is an XML tag: <sheetProtection password=… />. Delete that entire XML tag.
- Re-zip the files back up
- Rename from .ZIP to .XLSX
Done!
UPDATE: This method only applies to password protected workbooks. If the file is secured with the “Encrypt with Password” feature, it will not work.
UPDATE 2: It is important that you don’t have Windows configured to hide file extensions (which unfortunately is the default behavior). To enable displaying file name extensions, follow this Microsoft support article.
Thank you!
I’d like to also recommend who follows these steps to check that all the files are kept on the zip’s root instead of a folder or else it won’t work.
Hello,
i followed these steps,
1. .xlsx to .zip
2. extract to a folder with 7zip
3. but i got
[6]DataSpaces (Folder)
EncryptedPackage (File)
EncryptionInfo (File)
Unable to find this folder (Go to the xlworksheet sub-folder that you just extracted)
Help me
Thank you
Sibi
Merci from France
Chellapandi, apologies, it seems that this tutorial only applies to Protected Workbooks (not the “Encrypt with Password” option). I will update the post to reflect that.
I was able to follow the directions up to “re-zip the files back up”. I don’t know how to do this step. I also downloaded 7-Zip but no luck in trying to figure it out.
Amy, you should be able to go to the folder (where you extracted the contents of the .XLSX file), select all the files, and then right click and in the 7-Zip sub-menu select “Add to Whatever.zip”. After that rename it from Whatever.zip to Whatever.xlsx (replace “whatever” with the name of your file).
Worked for me… thanks for the tip!
couldn’t find the keyword, doesn’t work for me
This technique only works if the workbook is password protected. There is another Excel features called “Encrypt Spreadsheet with Password” and this does not work for that option. Are you sure you’re looking at the right thing?
Worked like a charm. People using sheet protection only probably don’t know how easy it is to hack.
Hi Adam: For some reason, the workbook I’m trying to open doesn’t seem to have even the characters ‘Prot’ in any of the XML files. The workbook has 17 visible worksheets and 5 invisible worksheets for a total of 22 XML files. Any tips?
Cannot unzip, says it’s not a valid zip file
Great it’s work …. thanks
thks,… great
thank you! it worked for me…
Hi,
I’m using MS Office 2013 and how to overcome .xlsx
followed your steps, but I’m not able to unzip. Pls help
I have checked and i can confirm that this technique should work just fine in Excel 2013. What’s the error you’re receiving and what are you doing exactly?
In excel 2013, I only see the option to encrypt with password. So this method doesn’t seem to work.
Actually here’s the deal.
These options add encryption:
File > Protect Workbook > Encrypt with Password
File > Save As > Tools > General Options > Password to Open
This option doesn’t add encryption so the above password recovery option will work:
Review tab > Protect Workbook > Structure > Password
Hello,
i followed these steps,
1. .xlsx to .zip
2. extract to a folder with 7zip
3. but i got
[6]DataSpaces (Folder)
EncryptedPackage (File)
EncryptionInfo (File)
Unable to find this folder (Go to the xlworksheet sub-folder that you just extracted)
Help me
Thank you
I Need to open the encrypted excel password how to open that?
Quickest way is to open the .xlsx file on a mac running Numbers which also unhides any tabs as well as removing password protection.
Accidental and awesome discovery but so are most awesome discoveries
Yes, there are no tricks for passwords to open. Just searching using special password recovery programs.
It is important to use video cards (GPU from AMD is the best). Video cards allow to increase the speed of searching tens of times.
I’m getting ”file format is not valid.” error message. Would appreciate some help! Thanks a lot.
Hello Tanzir, at what step are you getting that error? By default, Windows will hide file extensions for known file types. So if you call a ZIP file “Test.xlsx” it might be hiding the real extension and it could be “Test.xlsx.zip”. Make sure you disable the “Hide extensions for known file types” option. I updated the article with a link to support.microsoft.com with instructions on showing file name extensions.