Excel Password Remover

Forgotten your Excel password? Can neither open the file, nor edit a worksheet, nor save changes, nor correct a Excel VBA macro. Don’t worry!

All you need is an Excel password remover.

Find out more about the program, see what it can do and how it works with an illustrated example of Accent EXCEL Password Recovery.

Password protection in Microsoft Excel

Depending on their crackability Excel passwords can be divided into two groups:

Trivial passwords — instantly removable
Strong passwords — searching takes time

And somewhere in between there is a group of strong passwords with a hidden secret that you don’t need to look for.

Below we give you step-by-step guides on how to remove passwords of each of these groups.

Instant removal of a trivial Excel password

Instantly removable Excel passwords (trivial passwords) are the following:

Password to Modify
Password to Protect sheet
Password to Protect workbook
Password to VBA Project
Password to Open in Excel 2-95 (this obsolete and flawed file format is perhaps the only exception)

Any of these passwords can actually be removed (or found) instantly. You just need the right program designed for recovering Excel passwords.

And that works for all versions of Excel!

How to remove a trivial password in Excel

1. Start Accent EXCEL Password Recovery and open your password protected Excel file.

Use any method you like in Windows: button on the toolbar, from the menu bar (File → Open…) or a combination of hot keys (Ctrl + O):

Fig.1: Select a password protected Excel file

2. That’s it! Next thing you know the program displays all the passwords found and offers you to save the file with no password protection (for Excel VBA passwords):

Fig.2: Click on a password to copy it to clipboard

The passwords may differ from the original ones, but nevertheless they are 100% suitable for removing protection and are always instantly found.

Instant removal of trivial Excel passwords is due to the fact that the purpose of password protection in this case is to protect data from accidental damage or human error rather than unauthorized access.

Removal of strong Excel passwords — Password to Open

“Password to Open” protects Excel files from unauthorized access. In Excel 97 and later versions there is now way you can remove such a password instantly – you’ll have to recover it.

Password recovery is simply scanning through a range of options in search of the right combination. You specify the range of validation (say 300 million variants) and the password remover checks all of them one by one, so you don’t have to. If the password turns out to be in the range, you’ll be the luckiest man in the world. If it doesn’t, well… you’re gonna say some bad word, then take a deep breath, expand the range (with another 600 million variants) and start it all over again…

Also the processing rate of the program is very important. Note the search rate if you want to crack your “Password to Open” faster.

Based on different principles of setting a validation range the following three types of password attacks are used:

Brute-force attack. You specify a set а characters to generate a password with, set the length, and the program checks all possible combinations
Brute-force with extended mask. It's similar to the common brute-force, however the mask defines a list of possible characters for each position in the generated password and cuts off redundant validations (examples)
Dictionary attack. You link lists of words/passwords saved as a dictionary file to the program, and all the word/combinations (or their modifications) are checked one by one ( example)

AccentEPR uses these attacks to crack “Password to Open” in Microsoft Excel 97-2019.

How to remove a strong password in Excel:

1. Start AccentEPR and select your password protected file in the usual way:

Fig. 3: Open your password protected file with the program

2. See details about protection type, an estimated speed of cracking and select one of the password attacks:

Fig. 4: Ancillary data about protection of the file and prospects for cracking

3. Choose a ready-made script for a direct search or one of the three attacks and start the search or customize the selected attack:

Fig. 5: AccentEPR offers a ready-made script and three types of password attacks

The scripts contain description of the sets of validation ranges configured in a certain way. The program systematically checks all the ranges. The scripts do not require any additional settings — they are all defined in the script itself. You just need to click “Finish” to start the search.

Once you’ve selected one of the three password attacks you will have to define the attack settings and start processing by clicking “Finish”.

The software user guide presents detailed instructions on how to configure attack settings, and our knowledge base contains examples of using each password attack.

Successful cracking of a strong Excel password depends on many factors such as complexity and length of a password, the settings of the validation range and, of course, the speed at which the password cracker can work on your computer.

No password breaker can guarantee successful result. All it can guarantee is the maximum speed of searching for the password.

Acceleration on AMD/NVIDIA graphics cards

AMD/NVIDIA graphics cards enable blasting acceleration of password searching process. Depending on their performance characteristics and number the graphics cards can speed up an Excel password remover up some tens times.

Fig. 6: GPU acceleration for Excel files in action

Modern multithreaded GPUs process large amounts of data and greatly speed up password cracking algorithms. And that is true for Excel passwords as well.

Accent OFFICE Password Recovery supports GPU acceleration:

Accent OFFICE Password Recovery

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One specific feature: GPU acceleration works only for Microsoft Excel 2007-2019 (that is xlsx files). But on the plus side the program offers an even better trick for Excel 97-2003 files.

Decryption of Excel without password

When it comes to Microsoft Excel 97-2003 files with a 40-bit encryption key, that is for most xls-files, you don’t need to search for “Password to Open” as such files can be decrypted without a password.

In this case a 100% successful result is guaranteed. Fast and sure thing!

What is peculiar about a short encryption key is that normally it is easier to find the key rather than the password. And once you’ve got the key you don’t need a password to decrypt the file.

AccentOPR also supports the encryption key search for Excel 97-2003.

You can decrypt Excel/Word 97-2003 files online at the AccessBack.com.

The efficiency of an Excel password remover depends on the file format and the type of password protection used in it. But in any case searching for the password with such a program is always easier and more effective. You just need to choose the right password cracker that is fast and useful.