For excel from passweb.com excel gives us ability to protect our work whether to protect sensitive data or prevent accidental changes being made.
But then the problem arises when we forget the password or when someone leaves the organization without sharing password and the scenario goes on.
One of the drawbacks in excel is that there is no inbuilt way to reset the password so in this kind of scenarios i use buzzfeed excel recovery tool so before.
We jump to demo let me quickly highlight some of the main features in short buzzfeed for excel can be used to recover.
Excel file open password you can also use to unlock protector sheets and work structures as well and to top that it is now available at the throwaway price so.
And at the same time keeping your original data safe it supports dot xls and dot xlsx formats for excel 97 all the way till excel 2019..
Okay now let me give a quick demonstration on how to use this tool uh please note that the detailed user guide is available in the official website you can also um.
You know download the free trial version and try it out for yourself uh close this and start up um password for excel okay so when you open up the app you'll see two options.
The first one is to recover excel open password second one is to remove restrictions like uh the excel worksheet password or the structure log and so on so let's try.
This first this one is easier it's not tech time let me add a new uh workbook from template and let's see that i protect this with abc123.
It can be anything you know or symbols
Or something like that okay it does not matter and first i'm gonna protect the worksheet um so basically i copied from here.And i paste it here now it should not allow me to make any changes uh i can still add the sheets now i'll protect the structure as well.
No i'm not able to you know add any sheets as well i'm gonna save this as demo one and the format is xlsx okay um i'm gonna close this bring up.
The app and i'm gonna simply gonna drag it here or you can browse as well drag it here and click on remove so it immediately does just removes this so if you want to see.
The output you can click on open folder and the original file is not you know changed this is the output and then once you open you'll see that we are able to change it okay so as simple as.
That um i'm gonna close this without saving now coming back here now let's try for excel open password i'm gonna go back further so once you.
Click here you'll see these three options uh three attack modes or recovery modes so first one is the dictionary attacks so once you click on settings you'll see.
That the first time you download this application you'll see an option to download the latest dictionary if available and then once you download it will go to.
Where the software has been installed with the file unlocker underscore dictionary.text and you can also create your custom dictionary for example you click on add you can browse.
For the file
For example let's say that your you have very commonly used password um that you maintain a list of then you can.Also simply create a text file with different you know passwords like this okay and then you can simply save as uh let's call this custom.
Dictionary something like that and then um you should be able to browse from here yeah so you click here browse browse your dictionary open and.
That's how it is so for now i'll just leave this part as this because this one has you know like about seven million passwords i verified this you know records count.
By running one of this code um i basically copied you know this dictionary from the software location to my desktop this file so if i go here this file is.
About 73 mb and if i just use a simple vv code to print out what is the total lines of code then it will basically give me like it.
Has about seven million records in it okay so that's how i came to know that it has about that much records.
Okay um now uh let's try this first you know like this is the fastest because it's going through all the lists of you know available.
Uh possible passwords that are listed in the dictionary so first let's try this out let's reuse the same file um demo one this one is still logged and i can save.
As and then i'll call this as demo2 i'll add a password um so for this password let's say that we want to use uh percentage maybe a b.
C d so that it does not take too much time for us abcd123 i'll just use this as a password and put it here now that's uh.
Some more tips but just give me a moment so now this file has been password protected if i go into this demo demo too so it's asking for.
Password now yeah now if i let me just verify that the password is correctly entered okay so uh it works now let me try and bring.
This one here now and so at the moment saying that uh you know the password is unknown and once i click on this it's basically.
Going to go through uh the list of all the you know password available in the dictionary which is this dictionary yeah and let me click on recover.
Uh so yeah i'm gonna fast forward if it's taking time but it took me around uh one minute one minute took around you know like.
Eight to ten thousand records um you know try out so it's quite fast but it also depends a little bit on your computer you know configuration the ram.
And the memory available and the processor so that will have a little bit of impact on the speed okay so that took about less than two minutes to recover this password.
So now we can copy this uh it tells you exactly what the password is so you can copy this and then you can go and unlock the file okay so that's one way of uh you know.
Recovering the password using dictionary attack and as i've said is around like seven million records so you know possibility is quite high and whenever there is the latest dictionary.
It's going to be available here for you to download again okay so now for the second one here um we're gonna open again demo one and save as with the new password.
For this we'll use a bit simpler password because it will take too much time um if it is too complex but uh just to give you.
Familiarity how to you know filter down um and narrow down the search of the password okay so let's say that this is um.
Instead of abc123 let's try a3 uh maybe a3b one two c uh let's let's try this as a password just six characters yeah so i'll put a password.
And the password and let's call this demo tray and let me try and reopen this okay there it is okay so the password has been saved successfully.
Now let's try to recover you know using this mask attack uh so here basically you can you know specify if you have an idea about.
How much you know like the password link was then it becomes easier for you to filter you know filter down so that it does not try too.
Many combinations so uh now we know for this one that it is six characters so i'm gonna set this to six minimum password and.
Maximum is also six so i'm going to leave this as it is and now we know um you know here for example it's um using a number and a character.