How to remove password protection from a Microsoft Excel worksheet file?

I imagine it'd sound flippant if I just said "you remove password protection from an Excel file the same way you set up the password protection in the first place" so I will resist saying that. Okay? :-)

Seriously, it's a bit weird to remove the password because there's no feedback or indication that it's been removed: all you do is delete the previously entered password when you're doing a 'Save As' save.

The best way, however, is to step through the entire Security section on your document, so let me show you how to do that. The very first step is to open up the Excel spreadsheet in question, then go to Preferences:

You may be surprised if you've never poked around in the Excel preferences, there's a lot you can access:

You can explore later, however. Right now, let's stay on task! Click on "Security", and ...

Now you can set a password for opening or modifying here by simply typing one in. Since I already have a password protecting this document, you can see that they're shown with • symbols to represent each character in the password.

You can remove the password protection by simply deleting the password or passwords here, then click "OK". (as an experiment, I'm going to remove the password but also check "Read-only recommended".

With that changed, a quick File --> Save As... lets me specify a new name for the non-password-protected (but read-only recommended) file:

(Tip: a shortcut to set or delete passwords can be found by clicking on the "Options..." button from this file save dialog window too, if you don't want to fiddle with Preferences)

Now when I open up the spreadsheet instead of seeing a password prompt, I see this:

Pretty cool! I hope you can see from my example how to simply remove a password or, for that matter, add password protection to your spreadsheet next time you save it.