how to unprotect an excel sheet

To unprotect an Excel sheet, the method depends on whether you know the password or not.

If You Know the Password

1. Go to the Review tab on the ribbon.
2. Click Unprotect Sheet.
3. Enter the password when prompted.
4. The sheet protection will be removed immediately

Alternatively, you can right-click the sheet tab and select Unprotect Sheet , or go to Home > Format > Unprotect Sheet.

If You Don't Know the Password

There are several approaches to remove protection without the password:

Method 1: Use a VBA Macro to Crack the Password

• Save the workbook as an Excel 97-2003 file (.xls).
• Open the file and press Alt + F11 to open the VBA editor.
• Insert a new module and paste a VBA macro that tries password combinations to unprotect the sheet.
• Run the macro (F5), which will attempt to unlock the sheet by brute force.
• Once successful, the sheet will be unprotected

Method 2: Edit the Excel File as a ZIP Archive

• Make a backup of your Excel file.
• Rename the file extension from .xlsx to .zip.
• Open the ZIP archive and navigate to xl/worksheets/.
• Find the XML file corresponding to the protected sheet.
• Open it in a text editor and delete the <sheetProtection> tag.
• Save the XML file and close the archive.
• Rename the file extension back to .xlsx.
• Open the file in Excel; the sheet protection will be removed

Method 3: Use Google Sheets

• Upload the protected Excel file to Google Drive.
• Open it with Google Sheets.
• Google Sheets removes sheet protection automatically.
• Edit as needed and download back as Excel if desired

These methods allow you to unprotect an Excel sheet either with the password or by circumventing it if forgotten. The VBA and ZIP methods are effective but require some technical steps, while Google Sheets offers a simple no-code alternative. If you want to allow editing only in specific cells while keeping the rest of the sheet protected, you can unlock those cells before protecting the sheet again