The main reason why people protect Excel Workbooks is to prevent unauthorized access to important or sensitive data. Protecting the workbook prevents anyone without a password from viewing or editing the data. However, one might forget or lose the password; hence they cannot access their own workbooks. For this reason, they need to use password recovery methods to access the workbook.
In this article, I will guide you on how to unprotect a workbook without a password. First, let us look at the difference between Unprotecting Excel Workbook Vs Excel Worksheet.
Excel Workbook Vs Worksheet
There are two ways that users can protect their Excel Data. The first one is by encrypting it at the Workbook level. At the workbook users are able to encrypt the workbook with a password. In this method, an authorized user cannot view or edit the data. Therefore, they will be required to enter the password before opening the workbook. Marking as final at the workbook level makes all the worksheets read-only.
Conversely, protecting a worksheet only applies to the currently selected worksheet. In this scenario, users need to enter a password before making changes. If you protect one worksheet, other people can still access the unprotected sheets. If you are looking for a way to unprotect an Excel Worksheet without a password, then you need to read this tutorial.
However, if you are looking to unprotect Excel Workbooks, then read this tutorial to the end.
Methods for unprotecting Excel workbook without password
1. LostMyPass
LostMyPass is a cloud-based software that helps in recovering or removing password permissions from different types of files. It works on file types such as PDF, MS Office Word, MS Office PowerPoint, and Excel. Additionally, you can also recover or remove password permissions of archives such as Zip, Rar, and 7z.
Features
Password Recovery: This feature helps users to recover the exact password that they used to protect the excel workbook. In this scenario, the password permissions remain active. Therefore, to access the sheets, you need to enter the password that you have just recovered.
Remove Password permissions: This feature lets users get rid of the password permissions. Therefore, no need to enter the password before opening the Excel file.
Cons
Strong Password Recovery has a 61% probability of success
2. Password-Find
Password-Find is an online tool designed to unprotect Office files such as Excel, PowerPoint, and Microsoft Word. Since Pasword-Find is based online, then you can unprotect files regardless of the operating system that you are currently using.
The downside of using this service is that you need to buy a license. However, it’s an efficient and reliable software.
How to unprotect Excel Workbook using Password-Find
1. Open the official website
2. Click on the unprotect your file button
3. Select the file by clicking on the browse button
4. Choose the protected Excel workbook using the browser and click on open
5. Ensure the service agreement button is ticked and click on the next step
6. Choose whether to remove password permissions or recover password from your Excel Workbook
7. Click next step. Here you will be required to enter your license key. In case you don’t have it yet, you can get it by clicking buy a license just below the input form. To confirm whether the software has unprotected your Excel workbook, you can download the demo file or view it online. Note that the demo file will only have a few top rows of data. To get the whole document, you need to enter the license key.
8. Lastly, you can click on get the full document to download and save the workbook on your device
How to remove Excel Workbook encryption with password
If you remember your password, then follow these steps to remove the Excel workbook encryption
1. Open your encrypted Excel file
2. Enter your password and click okay
3. Now, click on file, then info
4. Under protect the workbook, click on the dropdown arrow
5. Click on encrypt with a password and place your cursor after the last password dot
6. Click on backspace to delete the password and click on okay.
As you can see from the image above, the password and encryption have been removed. Go ahead and save your document.
Conclusion
Excel workbook encryption prevents users from opening the Excel file without a password. If you forgot your own password, then don’t worry, as you can recover it using third-party tools. Alternatively, you can remove password permission with online tools without a password. For worksheets, you can still use online tools or the Zip method to remove password protection.
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