How to Break Protection on an Excel Worksheet
So you’re doing a quiz about movies in Excel. It’s pretty hard, and you decide to give up (I don’t usually approve of this, but it’s pretty hard when you haven’t even seen the flipping thing.) You still want to know the answers, though. You need some sploitz.
A quick Google finds a protection FAQ which links to a VBA procedure. You look at it and recoil in horror (does VB suck or what?)
Note that I have Excel ‘97 (I swear, Office gets worse with every version) so YMMV. Basically, you wanna go Tools > Macro > Record New Macro… or something and go into the Visual Basic Editor. Paste the aforelinked procedure. Press play on cassette.
It’ll give you a password (something unbreakable like AAAAABBBB+) in one of those stupid fucking Windows dialogs that don’t allow you to copy-paste (I guess that’s because the errors are usually useless.) I keyed it in to Notepad - save yourself the trouble, as the sheet has actually been broken already.
The tricky part is figuring out where the info you want is. Click on the “type your answer here” cells to observe their formula. It might reference some other cells. They could be in hidden columns - select a range of columns and right-click, unhide. Or it might be a self-contained formula. At any rate, you should be able to figure it out from here. And then you can embark on many happy minutes of saying “nnnhh! I can’t believe I didn’t get that!”
Genius, pure genius. Thanks!
Comment by King Babalou — January 30, 2006 @ 5:38 pm
ITS VERY GOOD
Comment by NARSINGH — October 20, 2006 @ 10:19 pm
THANK YOU
Comment by db — October 20, 2006 @ 10:24 pm
plz i tried it on office 2003 there is something missing in what i do. can u plz send me some details i would b greatful, im really ineed for this.
Comment by jack — January 31, 2007 @ 8:03 am
Hi Jack, I only have Office ‘97 myself (it’s a classic!) but I had a bit of a look round and think this might be a goer:
http://www.mcgimpsey.com/excel/removepwords.html
If you’re desperate, you could give these a go, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re spyware:
http://lastbit.com/excel/default.asp
http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/downloads/lost_excel_password_software/
Comment by db — February 3, 2007 @ 11:46 pm
Since the script is displaying a message box, press Ctrl+C when focus is on the message box and do a paste in Notepad. And enjoy :)
Comment by CoolGuy — March 29, 2007 @ 12:53 am
CoolGuy, that is a fucking awesome tip. In all my years of receiving Windows errors, I never realised. Thank you!
Comment by db — March 29, 2007 @ 6:59 pm
Brilliant. For a while, I was wondering why the password doesn’t work…
Comment by Sneaker — September 24, 2007 @ 8:36 pm
Perfect man!!! it worked. Thanks a lot.
Comment by SURESH — December 14, 2007 @ 11:30 pm
what the fuck dude. you fuckin suck. This does not work on excel 07 you lil whore. take your fucking dumb ass and go blow yourself up with 7 sticks of fuckin c4 you lil bitch
Comment by fuck you dude — February 7, 2008 @ 5:50 pm
Wow.
Comment by db — February 8, 2008 @ 5:52 pm
Thnx Dude just saved me a whole morning of work w/ a file of my own I forgot the code to. THNX
Comment by Zigma — February 23, 2008 @ 4:12 am
It’s good One , It’s working
Comment by Meena Ammam — February 25, 2008 @ 11:32 pm
Paste the aforelinked procedure. Press play on cassette.
what does this mean.. pls help me here
Comment by Arith — April 18, 2008 @ 4:08 am
Ah yes - by aforelinked procedure, I mean the one I had just linked to. Paste that into the Visual Basic Editor. Then there should be a toolbar button or some such to Play or Run or Go.
Forgive my C64 nostalgia - this old man could not halp himself.
Comment by db — April 19, 2008 @ 5:49 pm