In Excel: go to Review ▸ Unprotect Sheet, enter the password if one was set, and the sheet becomes fully editable again.
Open the Review tab and look for Unprotect Sheet (it replaces Protect Sheet while protection is on).
Click Unprotect Sheet.
If prompted, type the password that was used to protect it and click OK.
Confirm the sheet is editable — try typing in a previously locked cell.
What this does
Unprotecting a sheet removes the editing restrictions that Protect Sheet imposed, so every cell can be changed again. The control sits on the Review tab: if the sheet was protected without a password, one click of Unprotect Sheet frees it; if a password was set, Excel asks for it first. Removing protection is purely about re-enabling edits — it has nothing to do with opening an encrypted file, which needs the file password instead. Most people learn this as a sequence of clicks and forget it by next week; learning it as a pattern instead is what lets you apply it to the next, slightly different version of the problem without starting from scratch. That is the difference this page is trying to make. The difference between a quick fix and a sheet you can trust is the extra minute you spend validating “unprotect excel sheet with password”. Start on a copy or a tiny sample, keep the affected sheet visible, and compare the result with the tool above before you touch the real workbook. When this is a ribbon command, the selection matters more than the button: confirm the range, apply the command, then spot-check the output before saving. The point is a workspace setting that makes a big sheet comfortable to navigate, but the practical win is that someone else can open the file and understand what happened without asking you.
A worked example
A budget sheet shows "cell is protected" whenever you try to type. Go to the Review tab and click Unprotect Sheet. If a password was set, a box appears — enter it, click OK, and the protection lifts; the button now reads Protect Sheet again and every cell accepts input. If no password was ever set, the single click is all it takes and no prompt appears. You unprotect a sheet whenever locked cells are blocking a legitimate edit — updating a template someone secured, correcting a figure in a protected report, or reworking a form. It is the deliberate step that hands editing control back, the exact reverse of Protect Sheet. One habit worth forming early: name the cells that hold your inputs, so the formula reads in plain language instead of a string of cell addresses. A reviewer — or you in three months — can then follow the logic without decoding what B7 and D2 were supposed to mean, which is most of what makes a sheet maintainable.
In Google Sheets
Google Sheets handles this almost identically to Excel. The formula syntax above is the same, and the menu lives under a slightly different label rather than a ribbon tab. Use the platform toggle at the top of the page to switch every keyboard shortcut between Windows and Mac, and expect at most cosmetic differences in naming. The aim was to get you unstuck fast and leave you a little more capable than a copy-paste would. The answer is at the top, the tool proves it, and the detail above shows why it holds — so the next time a colleague asks, you can answer without reaching for search. If you take one thing from this page on “unprotect excel sheet with password”, make it the habit rather than the keystrokes: set the problem up with labelled inputs, reference those cells, and let Excel do the recomputing. Bookmark the page for the syntax, but do the example once in a blank sheet and check it against the tool above — five minutes of hands-on practice fixes the method in memory far better than re-reading, and it surfaces the small snags while they are still harmless. After that the technique is genuinely yours: faster than searching for it again, and reliable enough to drop into work that other people depend on.
Common mistakes
- Trying to unprotect without the password: there is no legitimate built-in bypass, so you genuinely need the password that was set.
- Confusing a protected sheet with an encrypted file — a file that will not open needs its open-password, not Unprotect Sheet.
- Unprotecting the wrong sheet in a multi-tab workbook; each sheet is protected and unprotected separately.
- Forgetting that workbook structure protection (locked tabs) is removed via Unprotect Workbook, a different button on the same tab.
Frequently asked questions
I forgot the sheet password — how do I unlock it?
Honestly, you need the password; Microsoft provides no official bypass for sheet protection. Store passwords where you can retrieve them, and ask whoever protected the sheet.
Is unprotecting the same as decrypting the file?
No. Unprotect Sheet re-enables cell editing; an encrypted file that refuses to open needs its open-password through the normal open dialog, not the Review tab.
How do I unprotect every sheet at once?
Excel has no one-click "unprotect all"; unprotect each tab in turn, or use a short VBA loop if you have the password for each.
Other ways people ask this
On the way here you may have searched this as “unprotect an excel sheet with password”, “password for unprotect sheet in excel”, “how to unprotect excel sheet password” and “how to unprotect sheet in excel with password” — it is all the same task, and this page is the single, complete answer to it.
Why do people search for this in so many different ways?
Because the same task has many names. “unprotect an excel sheet with password”, “password for unprotect sheet in excel”, “how to unprotect excel sheet password” all point at the one operation explained on this page, which is why they all lead here.