Remove Vba Password Excel
Kayleen Dauteuil
When I open excel - it tells me that it's password protected though I have tried using online suggestions to unprotect this. It says" >>> Is reserved by... enter password for write access, or open read only" I enter the password and have tried to unprotect by going into file/info/protect workbook. Here I have tried: Encrypt with password - I have deleted the password in here. I have "protect current sheet" the box that pops up says "unprotect sheet", I have put in my password to unprotect the sheet. (each step I try, I save it and close it and open again to see if it is still asking me for my password). I have gone to the tab and right clicked and clicked on Protect sheet, each time a box pops up called unprotect sheet and I enter the password - this also does not change the fact that I still need a password when I open this doc. I need this to be accessible. What can I try?
Thank you for responding. I tried this and all online suggestions. eventually i just did a save as and renamed it - this solved the issue. It was stuck on this password and would not remove it no matter what. It must have been corrupted.
With a password, you can easily protect whatever file you have. Password protection allows you to manage who can approach your files. Nobody else can access the files except the ones you have shared the password with. At times, you may have to edit the data in the workbook and share it with other people using a different password. Or it might be possible that you need to remove password from Excel file.
I would like to use workflow in Alteryx for a number of excels with password, so I prefer possibility to remove password/or possibility to read such file in Alteryx, rather than remove password in Excel every time I want to run workflow.
Nevertheless, I seem to be hitting a road block since when I click on Run, it flows to the R tool where it stays at 50% and this thing happens: these characters come one after another in a loop \ / - no error, no nothing. I attach printscreen.
P.S. As I was writing this, suddenly my excel file opened on my computer, outside Alteryx and it prompted the little window for the password. The percentage in Alteryx stayed at 50% still looping through those characters.
@RishiK thank you for providing the details and sample workflow. I've followed your example but run into a "There was an error in WriteYXDBStreaming" error. Any thoughts on how to resolve this? I'm running Alteryx 2020.3.5
Yes there is, as long as you are using a .xls format spreadsheet (the default for Excel up to 2003). For Excel 2007 onwards, the default is .xlsx, which is a fairly secure format, and this method will not work.
DISCLAIMER This worked for me and I have documented it here in the hope it will help someone out. I have not fully tested it. Please be sure to save all open files before proceeding with this option.
*NOTE: Be sure that you have changed the password to a new value, otherwise the next time you open the spreadsheet Excel will report errors (Unexpected Error), then when you access the list of VBA modules you will now see the names of the source modules but receive another error when trying to open forms/code/etc. To remedy this, go back to the VBA Project Properties and set the password to a new value. Save and re-open the Excel document and you should be good to go!
With my turn, this is built upon kaybee99's excellent answer which is built upon Đức Thanh Nguyễn's fantastic answer to allow this method to work with both 32/64 bit versions of Office.
Colin Pickard has an excellent answer, but there is one 'watch out' with this. There are instances (I haven't figured out the cause yet) where the total length of the "CMG=........GC=...." entry in the file is different from one excel file to the next. In some cases, this entry will be 137 bytes, and in others it will be 143 bytes. The 137 byte length is the odd one, and if this happens when you create your file with the '1234' password, just create another file, and it should jump to the 143 byte length.
This is not valid for Excel 2007/2010 files. The standard .xlsx file format is actually a .zip file containing numerous sub-folders with the formatting, layout, content, etc, stored as xml data. For an unprotected Excel 2007 file, you can just change the .xlsx extension to .zip, then open the zip file and look through all the xml data. It's very straightforward.
However, when you password protect an Excel 2007 file, the entire .zip (.xlsx) file is actually encrypted using RSA encryption. It is no longer possible to change the extension to .zip and browse the file contents.
It's simply a matter of changing the filename extension to .ZIP, unzipping the file, and using any basic Hex Editor (like XVI32) to "break" the existing password, which "confuses" Office so it prompts for a new password next time the file is opened.
Microsoft Office VBA Project passwords are not to be relied upon for security of any sensitive information. If security is important, use third-party encryption software.
In the event that your block of CMG="XXXX"\r\nDPB="XXXXX"\r\nGC="XXXXXX"in your 'known password' file is shorter than the existing block in the 'unknown password' file, pad your hex strings with trailing zeros to reach the correct length.
For Excel 2007 onward you need to change your file extension to .zipIn the archive there is a subfolder xl, in there you will find vbaProject.bin.Follow the step above with vbaProject.bin then save it back in the archive.Modify back your extension and voil! (meaning follow steps above)
Colin Pickard is mostly correct, but don't confuse the "password to open" protection for the entire file with the VBA password protection, which is completely different from the former and is the same for Office 2003 and 2007 (for Office 2007, rename the file to .zip and look for the vbaProject.bin inside the zip). And that technically the correct way to edit the file is to use a OLE compound document viewer like CFX to open up the correct stream. Of course, if you are just replacing bytes, the plain old binary editor may work.
If the file is a valid zip file (the first few bytes are 50 4B -- used in formats like .xlsm), then unzip the file and look for the subfile xl/vbaProject.bin. This is a CFB file just like the .xls files. Follow the instructions for the XLS format (applied to the subfile) and then just zip the contents.
Tom - I made a schoolboy error initially as I didn't watch the byte size and instead I copied and pasted from the "CMG" set up to the subsequent entry. This was two different text sizes between the two files, though, and I lost the VBA project just as Stewbob warned.
Using HxD, there is a counter tracking how much file you're selecting. Copy starting from CMG until the counter reads 8F (hex for 143) and likewise when pasting into the locked file - I ended up with twice the number of "..." at the end of the paste, which looked odd somehow and felt almost unnatural, but it worked.
I don't know if it is crucial, but I made sure I shut both the hex editor and excel down before reopening the file in Excel. I then had to go through the menus to open the VB Editor, into VBProject Properties and entered in the 'new' password to unlock the code.
ElcomSoft makes Advanced Office Password Breaker and Advanced Office Password Recovery products which may apply to this case, as long as the document was created in Office 2007 or prior.
The protection is a simple text comparison in Excel.Load Excel in your favourite debugger (Ollydbg being my tool of choice), find the code that does the comparison and fix it to always return true, this should let you access the macros.
The truth is that the code files for most macro-enabled Office documents are not encrypted and the password only prevents opening the project with Office programs.This means that, as other answers suggested, you can usually use an Office alternative to access and edit the file.
However, if you just need access to the code, you can use a tool like oledump.py to extract the Macro code. This is useful for malware analysis, as well as getting most of the code from the file so that you don't have to start from scratch if you forget the password.
For Excel 2016 64-bit on a Windows 10 machine, I have used a hex editor to be able to change the password of a protected xla (have not tested this for any other extensions).Tip: create a backup before you do this.
We can recover a document open password to all versions of encrypted MS Office Excel files (*.xls and *.xlsx). We don't recover a password for making changes (the so-called Permissions Password), but we can remove it from your document for free. Upload your file here and follow the instructions.
We offer you a free MS Excel password recovery try with a search through a database of 3 million of the most popular passwords. This work is done very quickly (from a few seconds to a couple of minutes), and is successful in 22% of cases.
If no password is found, then we can start searching for the lost password through the 20+ billion passwords database. It is a paid service, see the prices below. According to our internal statistics, the probability of a successful password recovery in this case is about 61%. MS Office 2003 Excel documents and its earlier versions are processed fast: within a few minutes. A later version of Excel documents may be processed longer, up to 24 hours.
If you do not know the password, upload the document to the LostMyPass and start the password recovery process. After it is successful, you will receive the document password, and then you can open it and remove the password protection yourself.
By using the service provided at LostMyPass.com you agree that you are not violating any laws or regulations on copyright or privacy issues that exist in your country and community by doing so. Furthermore, you guarantee that you are the holder of the copyright for the document you intend to recover or that you are using the recovery service for and on behalf of the copyright holder.
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