Most likely, you have been in a frustrating position when the macro password for your Excel worksheet has been lost or forgotten. Never lose hope since it’s not the end of the world just yet. The good news is that we can simply decode and remove macro password from Excel in at least a few different ways these days.
We will now demonstrate how to remove the Macros password from an Excel protected sheet using Visual Basic for Applications. You are unable to do anything with that document. If your excel sheet is password locked, you can’t edit it. When a sheet is not locked, you can only read the content of that sheet or make edits to the sections that are not locked. Furthermore, if a large number of formulae are used on that sheet, you will be unable to determine which formulas are employed on that page.
That is why you must break or delete the password from an Excel sheet in order to be able to change or read the complicated formulae that have been employed in the sheet’s creation.
Why do we need to Put Macros Password?
VBA macro (Visual Basic for Applications) Developers often include passwords in their work to keep their work safe. If a customer has sought you out to design a solution for them, it is understandable that you would provide a password to safeguard the solution. Why? for the simple reason that it is your intellectual property. If the client needs to make changes to the macro, they should contact you again so that you may make the necessary changes. You may also restrict access to your VBA macros down to the user level, preventing the client from distributing them to users outside the scope of the agreement.
In order to erase the password you have specified for your VBA macro, you must do it in one of two ways. First, we’ll go through the hard approach, also known as the manual technique, which we’ll explain in this piece. And, yes, you got it, the second method makes use of yet another macro to crack the password. So why do we need to master the manual approach in the first place, you ask?
Despite the fact that you will have to do everything manually in this case, you will gain a great deal of knowledge about the operation of VBA macros in the process. By the way, both ways are compatible with Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft PowerPoint (both 32- and 64-bit).
Steps to Remove Macro Password from Excel – Manually
- First, we need to rename the file extension of your spreadsheet from .xlsm to .zip and click Yes when prompted “Are you sure you want to change it?”
- Once the filename has been changed to a ZIP file, open it by double-clicking on it.
- After that, you’d see a folder named “xl.”
- Inside the xl folder, you will find the file vbaProject.bin. Extract this file to a temporary location on your computer.
- Get a HEX Editor and install it on your PC. There are several free versions available; we like the Freeware Hex Editor XVI32.
- In XVI32, open the vbaProject.bin (or vbaProject.bas) file.
- Look for the text “DPB=” (no quotes).
- Change “DPB=” to “DPx=” (no quotes).
- Save the file and close the HEX editor.
- Change the file extension from *zip to *.xlsm once more.
- In Microsoft Excel, launch Visual Basic, then click Tools and VBAProject Properties.
- Then, choose the Protection tab, input a new password, and save the *.xlsm file.
- Finally, users may access the VBA project file with their new password.
Limitations with Manual Method
- With the manual solution, you need to HEX editor to remove the macro password from Excel.
- As you can see, to remove the macro password, you need to attempt multiple steps. That’s why you require technical knowledge.
- If you skip any steps, then this process will not be workable.
Automatic Solution to Remove Macro Password without Hex Editor
In the above section, we provide you with a manual approach to unlocking macro passwords from Excel, but truly speaking, it comes with many limitations. So BitRecover gives you a VBA remover password without a Hex editor. It is a standalone software to remove VBA passwords from Excel workbooks in bulk without losing any bit of data.
Step to Remove VBA Password
- Download and run the software on your Windows system.
- Choose a VBA project by clicking on the Select Files / Select Folders option.
- After that, the software shows the VBA project file on the software panel. Check the file that you want to remove the macro password from.
- Then, choose the desired location where you want to save unlocked Excel file by clicking the browse option.