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.
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Passware Kit supports six basic password recovery attacks (Dictionary, Xieve, Brute-force, Mask, Known Password/Part, Previous Passwords), advanced attacks specific to file types, methods of grouping attacks, and various modifiers to customize attacks. Learn more...
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Older versions of office (prior to office 2010) had quite weak password hashing algorithms but the newer versions are much harder to recover. Tools such as those mentioned above can attempt to guess the password very quickly using long lists of possible passwords.
I have had the free excel password recovery working for 2 days. Is this normal? Should I stop and try something different? I know 6 characters of the excel FILE but there are more and I cant seem to remeber it!
I have a serious bad situation: I have an Excel file that is password protected and I need to access the information asap for a deadline for a project. Are there any good Excel password recovery tools available for Ubuntu that I could use to achieve this task?
A few years back I managed to circumvent the password protection on an Office '97 Excel file by doing something stupidly trivial... like exporting the document as a CSV file. This worked because XLS files had been password protected only, not encrypted.
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.
Many people add passwords to the Excel files to restrict access or modification, but sometimes, it happens a lot that people forgot Excel password. This can be frustrating as a lot of users may lose valuable files. But you do not have to worry about that anymore. If you forgot Excel password, there are numerous ways you can do to unlock the Excel file, and in this article, we will introduce valuable methods of Excel password recovery.
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