How to unprotect an Excel sheet

The number one priority of anyone who shares important documents with others is privacy and security. Fortunately, there are many ways to protect our files with passwords and other systems, but sometimes we're going to need to know how to lift that protection, either totally or partially. In this post we will see how to unprotect an excel sheet, or at least some part of it, and why it is interesting to do it on certain occasions.

It is not always enough to know the lock password to perform this operation. It is also necessary to know what the process is. We will deal with that in the following paragraphs.

Next, we are going to see what are the steps to follow to unprotect an Excel sheet knowing the previously applied lock password and also the method to follow when we do not know what that password is. As is logical, in the first case everything will be much simpler than in the second.

Unprotect an Excel sheet (knowing the password)

Obviously, having in our hands the password that was used to encrypt the document makes things much easier for us. Still, the way to proceed It depends on what version of Excel we have installed on our computer..

Excel versions after 2010

Most likely, the Microsoft Office package that we use regularly is updated with a version at least later than 2010. If so, this is what we must do to unprotect an Excel sheet knowing the password:

1. We start Excel and click on the button "Archive", which is located on the toolbar.
2. After we open the locked file.
3. Let's go to the tab "Review".
4. Among the options that open below, we select the one of "Unprotect Sheet".
5. Finally, we just have to enter password and the sheet will be unlocked to make the changes we need to make.

It should be noted that there are several ways to lock or protect a child of Excel. For example, you can set the protection on the entire document or only on a series of cells or specific ranges. If we want to perform a more specific unlock (which is only possible in newer versions of Excel), here's what to do:

1. First we select the spreadsheet we want to unprotect.
2. Let's go to the tab "Check"specifically to the group "Changes".
3. There we choose the option "Allow users to modify ranges".
4. Next we go to the picture "Ranges unlocked by password when the sheet is protected" and click on the button "Modify".
5. In the frame Title, we write the name of the range that you want to unlock, while in the box corresponding to the Cells we write the equal sign (=) and then the reference of the range that you want to unlock.
6. Finally, we enter the password and click "To accept".

Old versions of Excel

If, for whatever reason, your computer is stuck in the past and you are still using an old version of Excel (2003, for example), the steps to follow are slightly different:

1. 1. We start Excel and click on the button "Archive", which is located on the toolbar.
   2. After we open the locked file.
   3. Then we select the option "Tools" and in the menu that is displayed, we click on "Protection".
   4. We chose the option "Unprotect worksheet".
   5. Lastly, we enter the password to unlock the document.

Unprotect an Excel sheet (if we don't know the password)

In these cases there are also solutions. What's more, it is so simple that there is no choice but to question the effectiveness of Microsoft's protection and security systems. Here are some of the simplest and most effective methods:

Groupdocs

A simple online solution to unprotect an Excel sheet. All we have to do is access the website of Groupdocs and load in it the protected document of which we do not know the password. Then, press the "Unlock" or "Unlock" button and we will obtain the unlocked file, ready to download again.

Groupdocs works wonderfully, and it's also very fast, although some users don't recommend using it for important documents or sensitive information, as there could be security gaps.

Google Sheets

If the previous method causes you doubts, this one is much safer. We can access Google Sheets from the toolbox that we have in the upper right corner of the browser (if we are connected with a Google account) or directly through the following link: Google Sheets.

How is it done? These are the steps:

1. On the main screen, you have to click on the plus sign ("+"), after which a blank spreadsheet very similar to Excel opens.
2. Then we have to go to the menu "Archive" and, among the options that it contains, select the one of "Open".
3. Next we click on the tab "Increase", that is located on the right, to load the sheet that we want to unprotect.
4. Finally, we return to download that same sheet from the “File” menu, with the desired options. The newly downloaded sheet will no longer have any protection.