"needstechhelp" wrote in message
...
I've lost the password on an Excel file and I know that some people said
you
can't retrieve. But someone at work had done it previously with a software
that was purchased. I cannot contact this person and would like to know if
someone has any idea how to unlock the file either by removing the
password
or retrieving the password.

You can try our "Advanced Office Password Recovery":

http://www.elcomsoft.com/aopr.html

In Office 97/2000, encryption was 40-bit only (due to US export
restrictions)
and so very easy to break (guaranteed, regardless password length and
complexity).

Office XP/2003 uses old (compatible) encryption by default, but also
support the enhanced one -- with it, only dictionary and brute-force attacks
work. But they can help for relatively short and simple passwords only.

With Office 2007 and 2010, the situation is much worse (for us ) --
finally,
Microsoft has done everything right, and password-cracking speed speed is
very low. So there's a chance to break the password up to 5 chars only.

/Vladimir

/Vladimir