How To Open Password Protected Excel File On Mac
Tisham Candella
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Learn how to remove the password from a protected Excel worksheet, as well as how to crack the password for an encrypted Excel file. In most cases, removing a password from an editing-locked worksheet inside an Excel file is fast and easy! But if you need a password to even open the file, things get a bit tricky. There's no legitimate way to decrypt an Excel workbook without using a password cracker, which can be a very resource-intensive process, depending on the complexity of the password. Still, it's worth a try!
If you have an Excel sheet that you can open but can't edit, you can get around this by converting the sheet into an XML file and deleting the code that makes the sheet password protected. While this sounds hard, it's actually very easy to do. If the sheet is fully encrypted, you must use a password cracker.
"@context": " ", "@type": "FAQPage", "mainEntity": "@type": "Question", "name": "How to Unlock Protected Excel Sheets Without a Password", "acceptedAnswer": "@type": "Answer", "text": "What if you want to edit a protected sheet of your Microsoft Excel workbook but have forgotten your password? The zip file method unlocks your protected Excel sheet, no password is needed. Follow these steps."
What if you want to edit a protected sheet of your Microsoft Excel workbook but have forgotten your password? The zip file method unlocks your protected Excel sheet, no password is needed. Follow these steps.
An excel file (.docx) was shared with me through dropbox. I WAS able to open it on my android phone. Then, we decided to have it password protected, so the owner added a password. Now, I can't open it on my android. In fact, when I try to open it, it crashes the Dropbox app. I have already tried uninstalling and reinstalling the app and the problem persists. What do I do?
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I've tried opening it from the Dropbox app. It tries to open it (little blue progress bar along the bottom) and then crashes out of the app. (by "crashes" I mean the app completely closes and back to my phone's home screen. I've also tried sharing the link. In that case, when I try to open it on my phone it says "Couldn't load file. Check your internet connection. Try again" (My internet is connected, and I've tried cycling it on and off and that didn't help). Then it gives the option to "save to my dropbox", asks me to sign in again, and says "saved" . But when I try to open it it says, "The file can't be previewed. To open this file, try a computer or another app. " But there there's a little gray box at the bottom with a pencil in it. When I click that, It pops up "Open with..." and my choices are "Word, Docs, Polaris Office, Office Moblie, Send to Zoom Buddies". I pic Word, since it was made on word in the orignal on a computer. Then it opens. BUT, now it's a SAVED version, so I can't see new changes that are made on the original.
Another thing you might need to know is that, everytime I open the app on my phone, it asks me to sign in again and then the my email gets a notice saying "we noticed a new sign in to your Dropbox, is this you". I get that over and over each time I sign in my phone. I wonder why it's asking that all the time. ??
I hope all of this information helps you figure out what 's going on. I'm a teacher and I'm teaching virutally and I have so little extra time and I'm getting frustrated that I can't reach the info I need. I truly appreciate any help or info you can give.
Hi Daphne, it's strange, the three dots don't show up on that file. They do on some others, but not that one. Anyway, I tried exporting another file (one that had the three dots) with a password to my email and it still wouldn't open it because it said it couldn't open it since it required a password.
Hi @pennyspam, is it possible that the file was deleted or moved, which is why the app can't locate it, meaning there aren't any 3 dots on it. Try navigating to the file directly in the Files tab when you tap the icon on the top left.
I just had the owner of the original file unshare and reshare with me - just so we could start "fresh" . When I opened the Dropbox app (on my phone), it showed up and it had the three dots, but as soon as I click it, it crashes the app and I have to sign in again.
THEN I had them do all that again, only first, they removed the password off the Word Doc. This time, I was able to open it without crashing the app. Then they switched back ON the password and it crashed my app on my phone. So, without the password, it works just fine, but WITH the password, it crashes the app.
BTW - I forgot to mention that we have tried it with BOTH the Word & Excel version of the same document and it's the same result: it works if they remove the password, but NOT if the password is activated on the original.
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
I am looking for some help to let Alteryx to read and output password protected Excel Files. Besides using R or Python, look like there're old discussions on using a macro. However, look like that macro was taken off the shelf some time ago.
Thank you. The macro runs with no error. However, the macro automatically open the password protected file and then prompt to enter the password. and the output anchor of the macro isn't showing the data on the Excel tab.
Anything I am doing wrong here. I thought the password can be entered as a string in workflow so the macro can absorb the relevant information such as file path, file name and password and then output the data for further analysis.
Thank you for sharing this tool, I'd been using it on several workflows for a couple of weeks now. However, all of them stopped working out of nowhere, even though I made no changes to the workflows. Do you have any idea of what could have happened?
Hi, thanks for the response. I'm using the Python solution. It had been working perfeclty by removing the password, runing the rest of the workflow and then protecting the file again. But now, when I run the workflows I get the message that "Password Removal Failed" from the Python tool.
I'm trying to open a password protected file in excel without any user interaction. I searched online, and found this code which uses win32com.clientWhen I run this, I still get the prompt to enter the password...
Or, you could use msoffcrypto-tool as a library. While you could write an unencrypted version to disk like above, you may prefer to create an decrypted in-memory file and pass this to your Python Excel library (openpyxl, xlrd, etc.).
Thank you so much for the great answers on this topic. Trying to collate all of it. My requirement was to open a bunch of password protected excel files ( all had same password ) so that I could do some more processing on those. Please find the code below.
Hello,
with KNIME Analytics Platform 4.4 (which will be released this summer) the Excel Reader will support reading password protected files (internal ticket number ist AP-13961).
This is already implemented and available in the nightly build. Once you have installed the nightly build configure the Excel Reader as always and then go to the Encryption tab to enter the password.
Let us know if you encounter any problems with it.
Bye
Tobias