A new way to get rid of Excel's worksheet (worksheet) protection

The most widely recognized approach is to run a guessing password for VBA (https://uknowit.uwgb.edu/page.php?id=28850), which can be found in a few 10 seconds because the password hash is short so there are multiple passwords . But Excel2013 password hash is very long so the password is almost unique, relying on this VBA must not find the password.

Although I do not have Excel 2013, but speculated that this worksheet protection, in fact, there is no encryption of the contents of the file, just made some markup, said not to modify some of the established cell, should be removed from the tag can be freely modified. Experiment on Office 2010, it's OK, just change the file as follows:

1. Change the xlsx file suffix to zip and unzip. (if it's XLS, save it in xlsx format first)

   The directory structure after decompression is roughly:

   Top level directory _res directory docprops directory XL directory [Content_types].xml ....

2. In the extracted xl/worksheets directory, find Sheet1.xml, sheet2.xml ..., open

3. Remove the <sheetProtect.....> from the inside.

   <sheetprotection objects= "1" password= "????" scenarios= "1" sheet= "1"/>

4. Compress the contents of the top-level directory, but do not include the top-level directory. Change the compressed file suffix to xlsx, which is a freely modifiable xls file.

It is estimated that this method should be used in Excel2013.

This method and the removal of the PDF copy Print protection method is similar, do not need a password, just need to use the Qpdf tool to modify a bit.

Qpdf--decrypt Old_pdf_file New_pdf_file

A new way to get rid of Excel's worksheet (worksheet) Protection