excel password recovery

[fini]

A friend of mine has given me an excel 2000 file with an open and change password. He reckoned I couldn't work out the passwords so I bet him I could.

I got the open password by guess work, he really did use an obvious password, but I've been struggling with the change password. I've looked for an applications that would do it, but have been unable to find a free one that did more than 4 characters (which it seems it is longer than). Could anyone point me in the direction of an app that might crack it because there's no way I'm losing another bet to this guy!

fini

[Steve R Jones]

Change password as in you can't change the fields within the spreadsheet?

If so, all you have to do is copy and paste it to another workbook and Boom, no more protection.

[rraehal]

Go to this website:
http://www.straxx.com/excel/password.html

Download the password.xla macro or zip file. If you get the zip extract it first.

1) Open The file with Excel and open the macro while in the work book in question. Click the enable macros button when prompted.
2) In the tools menu at the very bottom there are two options to unprotect workbook and unportect sheet. Try both options a couple of times. Eventually they will work.

Sometimes you need to select unprotect sheet and unportect workbook, and sometimes if it is shared you must unshare the work book first using the actual excel commands provided by microsoft. If prompted for the password click cancel and try the macro commands again.

I have never had this fail. Sometimes it just takes a little playing around first as stated in the paragraph above.

[fini]

Thanks for the replies, but I cant use the macro because I dont want to just access it,, I have to tell my mate what both the password were instead of just gaining access to it..... any ideas?

fini