Guides
Forgot Your Excel Sheet Protection Password? How to Unprotect a Sheet
Updated 2026-10-13
Someone protected a sheet years ago, maybe you, and now it needs changes but nobody remembers the password. First work out which kind of password you're dealing with, because the two kinds are completely different.
Two kinds of password
|
Open password |
Protection password |
| Where it's set |
File > Info > Protect Workbook > Encrypt with Password |
Review > Protect Sheet / Protect Workbook |
| What you see |
The file won't open without the password |
The file opens, but cells can't be edited, or sheets can't be added, deleted or renamed |
| What it is |
The contents are encrypted |
A switch in the file; the password is stored as a hash and the data isn't encrypted |
| If you forget it |
No reliable way back |
Protection can be removed without touching the data |
This guide is about protection passwords. An open password is real encryption, and xlszip does not crack it.
If you know the password
- Sheet: Review > Unprotect Sheet and enter the password.
- Workbook structure (can't add, delete, rename or unhide sheets): click Review > Protect Workbook again and enter the password.
Forgot it: remove protection by hand
An .xlsx file is a ZIP package, and protection is just a tag in one of its XML files. If you're comfortable editing files:
- Copy the workbook, rename the copy from
.xlsx to .zip and extract it to a folder.
- Open the sheet's XML file under
xl/worksheets (for example sheet1.xml, one per sheet) in a text editor and delete the whole tag that starts with <sheetProtection.
- Workbook structure protection is the
<workbookProtection …/> tag in xl/workbook.xml; delete it too.
- Zip the contents of the folder (not the folder itself) and rename the result back to
.xlsx.
Common pitfalls: an extra folder level inside the zip makes Excel report the file as corrupt, and some editors change line endings or encoding and break the XML. Old .xls files use a different format; convert them to xlsx first.
Forgot it: remove protection online
xlszip Unprotect removes the restrictions without any unzipping:
- sheet protection and workbook structure protection;
- allow-edit ranges;
- the read-only recommendation and mark-as-final.
Values, formulas and formatting stay the same, and you can process several files at once. Files with an open password are reported as encrypted and are not cracked.
Only process files you're allowed to edit.