Changing or deleting passwords

Sometimes you may find that having to cough up a password each time that you need to open or modify an often-used spreadsheet is just not worth all the effort. You may then decide to remove the passwords that you've assigned to a workbook. In some cases, you may just want to change the passwords assigned to open or modify the workbook (either to passwords that are easier to remember or to ones that you want to distribute to a new list of users).

To delete or change a password for opening or modifying a workbook, open the Save As dialog box (File → Save As) and then open the Save Options dialog box (Tools → General Options on the Save As dialog box's toolbar).

To delete the password to open the file, simply press the Delete key to remove all the asterisks from the Password to Open text box (automatically selected when you open the Save Options dialog box). To reassign the password, replace the current password with the new one you want to assign by typing it over the original one. Then when you click OK, you need to reenter the new password in the Confirm Password dialog box and click OK.

To delete or change the password for modifying the workbook, you follow the same procedure, except that you have to be able to successfully reproduce the password for modifying the workbook after opening it and then change or delete the password that's entered into the Password to Modify text box in the Save Options dialog box.

Finally, after closing the Save Options dialog box, you simply click the Save button in the Save As dialog box and then click the Yes button in the alert dialog box that asks you if you want to replace the existing file.