Rubayed Razib Suprov
For privacy reasons, many of us prefer to put a password on the Excel, which can be on the whole workbook, or in the individual sheets. Either way, we also need to get rid of these protections. How we remove a password from Excel Files when opening the file will discuss here with adequate examples.
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Download this practice workbook below.
4 Easy Ways to Remove Password from Excel File When Opening
We are going to use the below dataset for demonstration purposes. We have got here the marks of students in various subjects. How we remove passwords from this worksheet will discuss.
1. From Info Feature
This method will remove the passwords from the file directly. Although the password has to be known beforehand.
Steps
- At first, you need to select the Excel file that needs to be unlocked.
- Open the file.
- You will notice that the file is now protected and asking for a password.
- To remove this password, you need to know the password, in this case, the password is exceldemy.
- But at the same time, we also want to remove the password permanently from the Excel file.
- To do this, first, click on the File option.
- When the starting window opens, click on the Info option, and from that option, you will notice that there the protect workbook option is grayed out. This means this workbook is protected with a password. Click on the icon.
- Then click on Encrypt with Password.
- After clicking on the Encrypt with Password, a new window will appear. From that window. You will observe that there is a password already in place.
- Remove that password by pressing Backspace on the keyboard.
- Click OK, after this.
- After then you will see the highlight on the Protect Workbook is now no longer showing.
2. General Options to Remove Password Protection
You can find an option named Tools from Save As command, which enables us to save the file without any passwords.
Steps
- To utilize this method, first, choose the File option from the drop-down menu.
- Then a green left side panel will open, from the panel, click on Save As option.
- Next, click on Browse.
- Then, in the File browsing box that appears, select the location of your file.
- When you click on Tools, a dropdown menu will appear. Select General Options from the drop-down menu.
- Then there will be a small window containing the password that will spawn.
- Delete the passwords and then click OK.
- Afterward, a password-free copy of the parent Excel file will be available in the selected directory.
3. Zipping Excel File to Remove Password
In this method, we are going to zip the Excel file and after some editing process, we are going to put the file back into the xlsx format. The final xlsx file will not contain the passwords.
Steps
- At first, in the file window, go to the view and tick the File Name Extension.
- Then select the file and from the Home tab, click on Rename.
- Next change only the extension from .xlsx to .zip format. Press Enter after the change.
- Then a warning popup window will appear. Click Yes.
- Then the .xlsx file will change to a zip file.
- Open the zip file. And double click on the xl folder.
- Inside the xl folder, click on the worksheets folder to enter it.
- Inside the xl folder, there is an XML file name XML.
- Select the file and right-click on the mouse.
- From the context menu, click on Copy To.
- Then there will be a new window asking for the directory of the copied file.
- Enter your favored directory and click on OK.
- In the selected directory, select the file once again. And right-click on the mouse. From the context menu, go to Open with, then click on Notepad.
- Then the file will open by the Notepad app.
- Next, press ‘Ctrl+F’, the shortcut for triggering the Find tool.
- A small window opens, click on Find Next.
- In the notepad, the location of the Protection will be highlighted.
- Then select the part of the text, from,”<sheetProtection” to “count=”1”>”, as shown in the image below.
- Press Backspace or Delete to delete the selected text.
- Press ‘Ctrl+S’ to save the edited text in the notepad.
- Then again come back to the file explorer, the directory of the original zip file.
- Now from the Home tab, Rename the file’s extension back to .xlsx.
- Open the file.
- Now you will notice that you can edit the cells which confirm that there is no password protection activated right now.
- To double-check, go to cells from the Home tab, click on Format, and from the drop-down menu, there is Protect Sheet option available.
- This confirms that there is no password protection because if there is any, then there will be an Unprotect Sheet option instead of Protect Sheet.
- This confirms that the above method of removing passwords from an Excel file when opening works perfectly.
4. Remove Password from Excel File Online
There are numerous online tools available online to remove passwords from Excel files.
Among them, Groupdocs are comparatively better suited if the password is known beforehand.
Steps
- To remove the password from the Excel file online you can use the link Remove Excel Password.
- Go to the website, by clicking on the link above.
- Now click on the Click or drop your files here icon on the site.
- A file browsing window will appear, from that window select the file. And click on Open.
- Then the selected file will be loaded into the site.
- You need to input the password into the empty type field below.
- Click Unlock after this.
- It will take a while to strip the file out of its passwords.
- Then click the Download Now button to download the new file.
After you open the file, it will no longer ask for any passwords.
Read More: Excel VBA: Unprotect Workbook with Password (7 Practical Examples)
2 Ways to Remove Password from Protected Sheets in Excel File
In Excel, you can lock the individual Excel sheets using the Protect Sheet options. then you also can remove them by following the methods below.
1. Remove Password Using Review Tab
From the review tab from the ribbon menu, we can remove the protected sheet password quite easily.
Steps
- If a sheet in your Excel file is protected, you can remove it using the Review tab.
- From the Review tab, click on Unprotect Sheets from the Protect group.
- Shortly after that, a small window will pop up asking for the sheet’s password.
- Enter the password and click OK.
- After that, the sheet will be free from password protection, and available for editing.
2. Using Unprotect Sheet Command
From the Home tab, the format cells tab has the Unprotect Sheet option, using which we can remove passwords from the Excel file.
Steps
- In protect sheets, you can open the Excel file, but you can’t edit any cells in the worksheet. It will ask for a password.
- To remove this you need to know the password beforehand.
- Then from the Home tab, go to the Cells group.
- Then click on Format, and then from the drop-down menu click on Unprotect Sheet.
- You’ll be presented with a box asking for your password as soon as you click Unprotect Sheet. Click OK after you’ve typed in your password.
After that, you’ll see that you have access to alter the worksheet.
Read More: Excel VBA: Unprotect Workbook without Password (2 Examples)
Conclusion
To sum it up, the question “how to remove password from Excel file when opening file” is answered here by using the info panel, online tools, and save as options. How we can remove the password protection of sheets is also discussed. 3 separate ways.
For this problem, a workbook is available for download where you can practice these methods.
Feel free to ask any questions or feedback through the comment section. Any suggestion for the betterment of the Exceldemy community will be highly appreciable
