in this video 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 gonna
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
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