Lost Excel password

My son has managed to forget / lose the password for an Excel spreadsheet. AIUI it's the one to open the file. It's Excel in Office XP (2002?).

I've Googled and found various paid products. Two things, clearly this is an area where malicious people may hang around and promote dubious software; he can't really afford the paid-for software for this one thing.

Anyone know of a suitable solution?

Unfortunately there is no way to crack Excel passwords, unlike Windows passwords. The Excel password "crackers" are programs that simply (joke!) go thought all the possible combinations of letters, numbers, upper case, lower case, characters etc. Depending on how complex the password was it can take years to run!!! Some sites give you an estimation eg 6 character password with numbers and letters all lower case = 12 hours. 12 character password, upper and lower case = 2 years.

I have no experience of using such programs.

Edited by Nick_Russell (Fri 08-Jan-10 09:24:51)

try opening it with 'open office', or 'google docs'

He has, I know not what as yet, found some software and managed to open it ok.

I only hope he hasn't brought trouble to his PC with the software.

Post deleted by billford