Excel Password Removal Tip

January 19, 2009

So this has nothing to do with Domino nor SharePoint, but it is something nifty that I thought I’d share:

I had a need to modify an Excel form sent to me by a vendor. The form was password protected, so I did some quick searches to find tools to remove the password. To be honest, I didn’t trust the tools that I found.

So i tried the following procedure. It works great:

1) Open your Excel file in OpenOffice

2) Re-save it as an Excel file.

3) Re-open in Excel and now you can remove protection without being prompted for a password.

Thanks, OpenOffice!

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2 Responses to “Excel Password Removal Tip”

  1. Carolyn Says:

    March 16, 2009 at 4:08 am

    I read your excel password tip and eagerly wnent to try this as we have a problem with spreadsheet we really need to unlock.

    Sadly it did not work as to open in open office it still asks for a password to open before I can then resave ?

    Any other suggestions or is there a way to open it I am not aware of ?

    Thanks,

  2. Jan Says:

    March 17, 2009 at 10:21 am

    Does anyone know whether the OpenOffice technique strips the formatting from the original? I had tried a similar technique I tried (think: Google docs) and it did work but trashed the formatting, making it a wash in terms of time saved. Same problem in OpenOffice?


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