How to Unlock an Excel Spreadsheet (With or Without the Password)

To unlock an Excel spreadsheet you know the password for, open it, go to the Review tab, and click Unprotect Sheet (or toggle Protect Workbook off), then type the password. If you have forgotten the password, you can still remove sheet and workbook protection, because that kind of protection is not encryption and the data was never scrambled.

The one thing that decides which method you need is what kind of lock you have, so start there.

First, know which lock you are dealing with

Excel has two protections that people both call "the password", and they could not be more different:

• Sheet or workbook protection. Set under Review > Protect Sheet or Protect Workbook. It stops people editing cells, or adding and moving sheets, but the data is fully visible and readable. This is not encrypted and can be removed with or without the password.
• Open-password encryption. Set under File > Info > Encrypt with Password. Excel demands a password the moment you try to open the file. This is genuine AES encryption and cannot be removed without the password by any legitimate method.

Quick test: if you can open the file and see the data but cannot edit it, you have protection (this guide unlocks it). If Excel asks for a password before it will even show you the file, you have encryption (see the last section).

Unlock a sheet when you know the password

The normal case:

1. Open the workbook and go to the Review tab.
2. Click Unprotect Sheet (in the Protect group).
3. Enter the password and click OK.

The sheet is now editable. To unlock the workbook structure (so you can add, delete, or reorder sheets), click Protect Workbook on the same tab to toggle it off, entering the password if prompted.

Unlock a sheet without the password (forgotten password)

Because sheet protection is not encryption, you have several ways in.

Option 1: A free browser tool (fastest)

The quickest option is our free Unprotect Excel tool. Drop in the .xlsx or .xlsm file, click Remove protection, and download an unlocked copy with all data and formatting intact. It runs entirely in your browser, so the file is never uploaded, which matters for budgets, payroll, and other sensitive spreadsheets. It removes sheet and workbook protection only, and tells you plainly if a file is actually encrypted.

Option 2: Edit the file's XML by hand (no software)

An .xlsx file is just a ZIP archive, so you can open it and delete the protection tag yourself:

1. Make a copy of the file and change its extension from .xlsx to .zip.
2. Open the ZIP and go into the xl/worksheets folder. Each sheet is a file like sheet1.xml.
3. Open the sheet you want to unlock in a text editor and find the tag that starts with <sheetProtection. Delete the whole tag, from <sheetProtection to its closing />.
4. Save the file back into the ZIP, then rename the archive's extension from .zip back to .xlsx.

Open it in Excel and the sheet is editable. To unlock workbook structure, do the same to <workbookProtection ... /> inside xl/workbook.xml.

Option 3: A VBA macro

If you prefer to stay inside Excel, you can run a short macro that unlocks the active sheet. Open the protected workbook, press Alt+F11 to open the VBA editor, click Insert > Module, paste in the code below, then press F5 to run it:

Sub UnprotectActiveSheet()
    Dim i As Integer, j As Integer, k As Integer
    Dim l As Integer, m As Integer, n As Integer
    Dim i1 As Integer, i2 As Integer, i3 As Integer
    Dim i4 As Integer, i5 As Integer, i6 As Integer
    On Error Resume Next
    For i = 65 To 66: For j = 65 To 66: For k = 65 To 66
    For l = 65 To 66: For m = 65 To 66: For i1 = 65 To 66
    For i2 = 65 To 66: For i3 = 65 To 66: For i4 = 65 To 66
    For i5 = 65 To 66: For i6 = 65 To 66: For n = 32 To 126
        ActiveSheet.Unprotect Chr(i) & Chr(j) & Chr(k) & _
            Chr(l) & Chr(m) & Chr(i1) & Chr(i2) & Chr(i3) & _
            Chr(i4) & Chr(i5) & Chr(i6) & Chr(n)
        If ActiveSheet.ProtectContents = False Then
            MsgBox "Sheet unprotected."
            Exit Sub
        End If
    Next: Next: Next: Next: Next: Next
    Next: Next: Next: Next: Next: Next
End Sub

It works by finding a password that produces the same weak hash as the original, which is possible because the legacy protection algorithm is easy to collide. That also means it is mainly reliable on the old binary .xls format and older protection. Modern .xlsx files (Excel 2013 and later) use a stronger SHA-512 hash that this brute force will not crack in any reasonable time, so for a modern .xlsx use the ZIP method above or the Unprotect Excel tool instead. As with every method here, only run it on files you own or are allowed to edit.

Option 4: Open it in Google Sheets

Uploading the file to Google Sheets and opening it there often ignores Excel's sheet protection entirely, letting you copy the now-editable data back out. Handy in a pinch, though it can disturb complex formatting.

Unlock the workbook structure

If you can edit cells but cannot insert, delete, rename, or reorder sheets, the workbook is protected rather than the sheet. Go to Review > Protect Workbook and toggle it off (with the password), or remove the <workbookProtection> tag from xl/workbook.xml using the ZIP method above. The free tool removes this too.

If Excel asks for a password just to open the file

That is the encryption case, and it is genuinely different. The entire file is scrambled, so there is nothing to edit until it is decrypted, and no legitimate tool can remove the password without it. Your options are:

• Enter the password, then remove it for good: File > Info > Protect Workbook > Encrypt with Password, delete the password from the box, and click OK. Save the file.
• If the password is truly lost, only paid brute-force recovery services can attempt it, with no guarantee, and you should only ever do this on your own files.

This is also the lesson in reverse: if you actually need to secure a spreadsheet, use Encrypt with Password, not Protect Sheet, because everything in this guide shows how easily plain protection comes off.

Quick reference

For a locked sheet you cannot edit, the fastest fix is the free Unprotect Excel tool; it does in one click what the manual ZIP edit does by hand, without uploading your file anywhere.