The tutorial shows how to protect Excel sheet with or without

passwords. It also explains how to unlock Excel spreadsheet

without password if you forgot or misplaced it.
When sharing your worksheets with other people or sending
your Excel files outside of your organization, you may want to
prevent other users from changing cells that shouldn't be
changed, and also from moving or deleting important data in
your worksheet or workbook.
Luckily, Excel provides a quick and easy way to lock a sheet
or password protect an entire workbook to prevent accidental
or deliberate changes in their contents.
Excel worksheet protection - the basics
How to password protect an Excel sheet
How to unlock Excel spreadsheet
o How to unlock Excel sheet with password
o How to unprotect Excel sheet without password
How to protect a workbook in Excel
o Unlock a protected workbook
o Password protect an Excel file from opening
o Password protect a workbook from modifying

What you need to know about

Excel worksheet protection
Worksheet protection in Excel is not a security feature. It's is
not actually intended to prevent people from accessing data in
a password-protected worksheet. Why? Because Microsoft
Excel uses a very simple encryption algorithm for worksheet
protection. Even when you protect your Excel worksheet with
a password, that password is very easy to break.
In older versions (below Microsoft Excel 2010), it doesn't even
matter how long and complex your password is. Anyone who
has at least some basic knowledge of VBA can crack it in
minutes (here's an example of the VBA code that easily
cracks passwords in Excel 2010 and lower versions).
The recent versions of Excel 2013 and 2016 use more
sophisticated methods of sheet protection, but they are also
vulnerable and can be unlocked without knowing a password.
In other words, if someone really wants to get access to a
protected sheet, they will.
So, does this mean that Excel worksheet protection is
absolutely pointless? Not at all! It makes sense to lock Excel
sheets to avoid accidental changes in the sheet contents. A
common example is Locking formula cells to prevent
inadvertent erasure or modification of formulas.
The bottom line is - lock an Excel spreadsheet to prevent
other users from accidentally tampering with your data, but
never store sensitive information in your Excel sheets.
If you strive to ensure the maximum security protection for
your Excel files, be sure to do all of the following:
1. Use the modern versions of Excel 2010, Excel 2013, and
2016 with enhanced data encryption mechanisms.
2. Protect your sheets with strong passwords that include
different types of alpha numeric characters and special
 symbols. At that, try to make passwords as random as
possible, for example by using our password generating
tool.
3. Protect the workbook structure to prevent other people from
adding, moving, renaming, deleting or unhiding your sheets.
4. For workbook-level security, encrypt the workbook with
different passwords from opening and modifying.
5. If possible, store your Excel files with sensitive information
in a secure location, e.g. on an encrypted hard drive.

How to protect Excel sheet

To protect a sheet in Excel 2016, 2013 and 2010, perform the
following steps.
1. Right click a worksheet tab at the bottom of your screen
and select Protect Sheet from the context menu.
Or, click the Protect Sheet button on the Review tab, in
the Changes group.

2. In the Protect Sheet dialog window, do the following:

o To password protect your Excel sheet, type a password
in the corresponding field. Be sure to remember the
password or store it in a safe location because you will
need it later to unprotect the sheet.
o If the worksheet protection is nothing more than a
precaution against accidental modification of the sheet
contents by yourself or by the members of your local team,
you may not want to bother about memorizing the password
and leave the password field empty. In this case,
unprotecting the sheet takes just a single click on
the Unprotect Sheet button on the ribbon or in the sheet
tab's right-click menu.
o Select the actions you allow the users to perform.
By default, the following 2 options are selected: Select
locked cells and Select unlocked cells. If you leave only
these two options selected, the users of your sheet,
including yourself, will be able only to select cells (both
locked and unlocked).
To allow some other actions such as sorting, filtering,
formatting cells, deleting or inserting rows and columns,
check the corresponding boxes.
If you don't check any action, users will only be able to view
the contents of your Excel sheet.
o Click the OK button.
3. The Confirm Password dialog box will pop-up prompting
you to retype the password so that an accidental misprint
won't lock your Excel sheet forever. Retype the password
and click OK. Done!

How to unprotect Excel sheet

As you have just seen, it's very easy to password protect a
sheet in Excel. Unprotecting a spreadsheet is even easier,
provided that you know the password. Though, unlocking an
Excel spreadsheet without password is no big deal either :)

How to unprotect Excel sheet with

password
If you know the password for the protected sheet, removing
protection is a matter of seconds. Just do any of the following:
 Right-click the sheet tab, and select Unprotect Sheet from
the context menu.

On the Review tab, in the Changes group, click Unprotect

Sheet.
 On the Home tab, in the Cells group, click Format, and
select Unprotect Sheet from the drop-down menu.

If you are dealing with a password-protected worksheet,

Excel will ask you to enter the password. Type the password
and click OK.
If the worksheet was not protected with password, clicking
the Unprotect Sheet button is all it takes to unlock the sheet.

How to unprotect Excel sheet without

password
As mentioned in the beginning of this tutorial, Excel worksheet
protection is quite weak even in the recent versions of Excel
2013 and Excel 2016. If you need to edit a password
protected sheet but you cannot remember the password, try
to unlock that Excel spreadsheet by using one of the following
methods.

Unlock Excel spreadsheet with VBA code (for

Excel 2010 and lower)
If you are using Excel 2010 or older version, you can unlock a
password-protected sheet with the following macro.
1. Press Alt + F11 to open the Visual Basic Editor.
2. Right-click the workbook name on the left pane (Project-
VBAProject pane) and select Insert > Module from the
context menu.
3. In the window that appears, paste in the following code:
?
Sub PasswordBreaker()
'Breaks worksheet password protection.

Dim i As Integer, j As Integer, k As Integer

Dim l As Integer, m As Integer, n As Integer
Dim i1 As Integer, i2 As Integer, i3 As Integer
Dim i4 As Integer, i5 As Integer, i6 As Integer

On Error Resume Next

For i = 65 To 66: For j = 65 To 66: For k = 65 To 66

For l = 65 To 66: For m = 65 To 66: For i1 = 65 To 66
For i2 = 65 To 66: For i3 = 65 To 66: For i4 = 65 To 66
For i5 = 65 To 66: For i6 = 65 To 66: For n = 32 To 126

ActiveSheet.Unprotect Chr(i) & Chr(j) & Chr(k) & _

Chr(l) & Chr(m) & Chr(i1) & Chr(i2) & Chr(i3) & _
Chr(i4) & Chr(i5) & Chr(i6) & Chr(n)

If ActiveSheet.ProtectContents = False Then

MsgBox "One usable password is " & Chr(i) & Chr(j) & _
Chr(k) & Chr(l) & Chr(m) & Chr(i1) & Chr(i2) & _
Chr(i3) & Chr(i4) & Chr(i5) & Chr(i6) & Chr(n)

Exit Sub
 End If

Next: Next: Next: Next: Next: Next

Next: Next: Next: Next: Next: Next
End Sub
4. Press F5 or click the Run button on the toolbar and wait a
couple of minutes. The macro will report a cracked
password, which is not the original one (always some
combination of A's and B's), but nevertheless it works.
If you are not very comfortable with VBA, you can find the
detailed guidance in the following tutorial: How to insert and
run VBA code in Excel.
If you need to unprotect Excel sheet without password in the
modern versions of Excel 2013 and Excel 2016, try one of
free tools, for example Password Protection Remover add-in
for Excel.

Copy the protected sheet contents to another

worksheet
Another way (or rather a workaround) to unlock an Excel
sheet that was protected with password is to copy its entire
contents to a new sheet. Here's how:
1. Open the password-protected sheet.
2. With the cursor positioned in cell A1, press Shift + Ctrl +
End to select all used cells in the worksheet.
3. Press Ctrl + C to copy the selected cells.
4. Create a new sheet in the current workbook or in a different
workbook (to create a new Excel file, simply press Ctrl + N).
 5. In the new blank worksheet, place the cursor in A1 and
press Ctrl + V to paste the contents of the password-
protected sheet.
Notes:
This method works only if the Select locked cells and Select
unlocked cells actions are allowed in the protected
spreadsheet.
If the password-protected worksheet has external links to
other sheets or workbooks, you may need to re-create those
links manually.
You can use Paste Special to copy / paste the column widths
so you won't need to adjust them in the new sheet manually.

How to protect a workbook in

Excel
Apart from protecting the sheet contents, you may also want
lock the entire workbook to prevent users from adding,
moving, renaming or deleting worksheets, and viewing hidden
sheets.
To protect the workbook, perform the following steps:
1. On the Review tab, in the Changes group, click the Protect
Workbook button.
2. Under Protect workbook for, select one of the two
options, or both:
o Check the Structure box to protect the structure of a
workbook. This will prevent the following actions:
Viewing hidden worksheets.
Renaming, moving, hiding or deleting sheets.
Inserting new sheets and chart sheets. However, users will
be able to insert a chart in an existing worksheet.
Moving or copying sheets to another workbook.
o Check the Windows box to retain the size and position of
workbook windows. This will prevent users from moving,
resizing, minimizing, or closing the workbook windows.

Note. The Windows option is not available (greyed out) in

Excel 2013 and Excel 2016, as shown in the screenshot
above. It is because Microsoft introduced the Single
Document Interface in Excel 2013, where each workbook
has its own top-level window that can be minimized,
restored, and closed.
3. In the Password box, type a password, and click
the OK button.
As indicated on the dialog window, a password is optional.
 However, if you do not enter a password, then anybody will
be able to unlock your workbook with a button click.
4. Retype the password in the Confirm Password window
and click OK. That's it!

How to unlock a protected workbook in

Excel
To remove the workbook protection, do the following:
1. Click the Protect Workbook button again (in a locked
workbook, it is highlighted in green like in the screenshot
below):

2. Type the password if prompted.

3. Save the workbook.
Important note! Protecting the workbook structure should not
be confused with workbook-level password encryption that
can prevent other users from opening or/and modifying your
workbook. If you are interested in this level of workbook
protection, check out the next sections of this tutorial.

Password protect Excel workbook from

opening
If you store your workbooks in a shared location such as a
company local network, and you want to prevent other users
from viewing your Excel files, you can encrypt your workbook
with password that won't even let other people open it.
1. In the workbook you want to encrypt, click File > Info, click
the Protect Workbook button, and select Encrypt with
Password in the drop-down menu.

2. The Encrypt Document window will appear, you enter a

password in the Password box, and click OK.

.
 By default, Microsoft Excel uses AES 128-bit advanced
encryption, and you can supply a password up to 255
characters.
3. Retype the password in the Reenter password box, and
click OK.
4. Save your workbook.
To remove the workbook encryption, repeat the above
steps, delete the password from the Password box, click OK,
and then save your workbook.
Tip. In addition to password-protection, you can secure your
Excel files further by using the BitLocker Drive Encryption,
which is available in the Ultimate and Enterprise editions of
Windows Vista and Windows.

Password protect Excel workbook from

modifying
If you don't mind other users opening your Excel file but you
want to prevent them from making any changes to your
workbook, perform the following steps.
1. In your Excel workbook, click the Save As button, and then
click the Tools button at the bottom of the window.
2. In the Tools drop-down menu, select General Options.

3. In the General Options dialog window, type a password in

the Password to modify box. Additionally, you can select
the Read-only option, which is recommended.
 Tip. If you want to protect your Excel file both from
modifying and opening, type the passwords in
the Password to open and Password to modify boxes. It
can be the same password of two different ones.
4. Retype the password in the Confirm Password dialog, and
click OK. If you've entered 2 passwords in the previous
step, you will be asked to confirm both.
5. Finally, click the Save button in the Save As dialog.
To remove the password protection, repeat the above
steps, and delete the password(s) from the Password to
open and Password to modify boxes. Then click
the Save button to save your workbook.
This is how you can protect an Excel sheet and lock the entire
workbook from changing or opening. However, sometimes
you may not want to go that far and rather lock only certain
cells in your sheet. And this is exactly what we are going to
discuss in the next article. I thank you for reading and hope to
see you on our blog next week.