Tuesday, June 21, 2011

How to Get/Crack a Lost Excel Macro PW? - Solved!

With the help of this post
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1026483/is-there-a-way-to-crack-the-password-on-an-excel-vba-project
and a bit of hacking ...

This seems to be the easiest way (and it should scare y'all just how easy this was, just took some time)

a.) XLSM, XLSB (convert to XLSM, take the performance hit)
b.) VBA is pw protected, not the workbook or worksheet (if so, you're hosed)
c.) Back up file (you'll likely screw this up the first time or two and if you do you'll lose all the VBA modules)
d.) Change extension to .zip, extract to subfolder
e.) in .\xl\vbaProject.bin, with a hex/binary editor (not a file editor) munge the key [dpb] (i.e. becomes [dpx]), save
f.) On parent level, select xml file and the three subfolders, right click, "Send to", "Compressed Zip Folder"
g.) Rename zip file to xlsm extension, open file
h.) When prompted for invalid key, select "Yes" - continue
i.) Open VBA editor
j.) When you go to look at a module, you'll get an error
k.) Go to Tools / Properties / Protection, reset PW, save

You should now be able to view the module source code.

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