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MapExcel Password Recovery
Excel Password by Thegrideon Software is a feature-rich and highly-optimized password recovery tool for MS Excel Spreadsheets and Templates (.xlsx, .xlsb, .xlsm, .xls, .xlt, ...). It works with new MS Excel 2007 - 2024 & Office 365 files (XML and BIFF12 binary formats) as well as with old MS Excel 95 - 2003 files (BIFF7 and BIFF8 formats). You may also check Password Search FAQ if "password to open" recovery is required.
Excel Password Recovery Features:
- All Excel 95-2024 / Office 365 encryption methods are supported.
- Workbook, Sheets, Ranges, Share and Write passwords are recovered or removed instantly:
- charts, sheets, ranges, ... are listed with passwords and states (visible, hidden, veryHidden);
- names, states and passwords list can be saved as '.csv' file;
- Several "password to open" search attacks can be configured and queued
- advanced mixed attacks for precise search range setup:
- multi-position moves to cover modern password policies;
- simple modifications: add part(s) copy, replace chars, etc.
- typing errors, case switching, char substitutions;
- brute-force attacks based on a charset and length selected:
- limit number of equal, capital or special chars or digits;
- dictionary attacks with modifications (several wordlists are included):
- advanced keyboard layouts-aware recovery technique;
- password in reverse, capitalized, uppercased, lowercased;
- number ranges (e.g. 1-31, 01-12, 2013-2020, etc.);
- "Output attacks to a file" option to verify search settings or to generate a new wordlist, etc.
- Highly optimized code (SSE, AVX, AVX2, AVX-512) guarantees best performance.
- Utilizes NVIDIA and AMD Graphics processing units with a high-performance methods.
- Utilizes integrated Intel Iris and HD Graphics GPUs.
- Supports up to 64 simultaneous processing threads (multi-CPU, multi-GPU).
- Audio, script or web address based post-search notification.
- Windows 7 - Windows 11.
Program Screenshots:
Data in files locked with "password to open" is encrypted with password-based keys. Excel 97-2003 default encryption is not very strong (40-bit RC4) and data is extractable with guarantee (please check ExcelDecryptor for details). Excel 2007-2024 (and Office 365) formats are AES-encrypted with keys generated from passwords using PBKDF2 derivation function (with many thousands of SHA hash iterations to counteract exhaustive search), thus password is required to access encrypted data.Excel Password allows you to setup multiple password search attacks such as advanced mixed attacks to exploit any known password details (parts or patterns) and to cut search time required. It is highly optimized tool as you can see from test results listed below for some common CPUs and GPUs.
Workbook, Sheets and Ranges passwords can be instantly recovered or removed by Excel Password. Passwords are not stored in a file and there are several format-specific methods to generate password verifications values (hash), thus in some cases passwords can be recovered or alternative passwords (with equal hash) can be generated and for some formats the best option is to remove protection altogether.
Custom User Interface settings are occasionally used to hide some Excel features and options (e.g. remove standard Ribbon tabs with <ribbon startFromScratch="true"> customUI attribute). Excel Password allows you to view and modify Custom UI XML markup as well.
VBA projects can be used to extend spreadsheets functionality (from basic calculations to advanced external data access), but in addition VBA code can contain "self-protection" routines. Manual code modifications are required to selectively disable some VBA protection functions (like sheets auto-lock on startup). You can disable VBA functionality in full (File tab -> Options -> Trust Center -> Trust Center Settings -> Macro Settings -> Disable all macros) or check VBA Recovery Toolkit to access locked modules, view source code, etc.
Excel 97 - 2003:
| CPU only: |
|---|
| 40bit RC4: |
| CryptoAPI: |
| Intel® Core™2 Duo T7500 @ 2.20GHz |
Intel® Atom™ Z3740 @ 1.33GHz |
Intel® Core™ i3 2100 @ 3.10GHz |
Intel® Core™ i3 4130 @ 3.40GHz |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 550 000 p/s | 1 900 000 p/s | 3 700 000 p/s | 4 600 000 p/s |
| 1 350 000 p/s | 1 600 000 p/s | 3 200 000 p/s | 4 100 000 p/s |
Excel 2007 - 2024:
The final password recovery speed is equal to CPUspeed + GPU(1)speed + ... + GPU(N)speed.
For example (Excel 2007): Intel i3 + integrated HD 4400 GPU + AMD R9 270 = 2 100 + 820 + 27 300 = ~30 000 p/s (passwords per second).
| CPU: |
|---|
| Instructions Set: |
| Excel 2007: |
| Excel 2010: |
| 2013 - 2024: |
| Intel® Core™2 Duo T7500 @ 2.20GHz |
Intel® Core™ i3 2100 @ 3.10GHz |
Intel® Core™ i3 4130 @ 3.40GHz |
Amazon EC2 "c5.large" Xeon® Platinum core |
|---|---|---|---|
| SSE2 | AVX | AVX2 | AVX512 |
| ~470 p/s | ~940 p/s | ~2 100 p/s | ~2 500 p/s |
| ~230 p/s | ~475 p/s | ~1 050 p/s | ~1 200 p/s |
| ~30 p/s | ~60 p/s | ~135 p/s | ~210 p/s |
Integrated GPUs
Modern integrated GPUs (like Intel HD and Iris Graphics) can be used for password recovery acceleration. Integrated GPUs are not as powerful as dedicated (discrete) devices and often overlooked but can add up to 30% to CPU performance.
AMD and Nvidia GPUs
Compute units or stream multiprocessors (CU, SM, SMX, SMM) are the main building blocks of GPU calculation power, thus 32xCU GPU card is usually twice as fast as 16xCU GPU card of the same family and architecture running at the same frequency.
The table below shows expected performance per SM / CU for Nvidia and AMD GPUs as well as several actual examples.
| NVIDIA GPU: |
|---|
| Per SM at 1000 MHz |
| Tesla K80 (Kepler 2.0) 2x13xSMX, 820 MHz |
| Tesla V100 (Volta) 80xSM, 1380 Mhz |
| Excel 2007: | Excel 2010: | 2013 - 2024: |
|---|---|---|
| 2000-3000 p/s | 1000-1500 p/s | 150-200 p/s |
| 54 000 p/s 54000/26/0.82=2500 |
27 000 p/s 27000/26/0.82=1250 |
3 300 p/s 3300/26/0.82=155 |
| 240 000 p/s 240000/80/1.38=2175 |
120 000 p/s 120000/80/1.38=1090 |
18 000 p/s 18000/80/1.38=160 |
| AMD GPU: |
|---|
| Per CU at 1000MHz |
| R9 270 (GCN 1.0) 20xCU, 950 MHz |
| RX 480 (GCN 4.0) 36xCU, 1250 MHz |
| Excel 2007: | Excel 2010: | 2013 - 2024: |
|---|---|---|
| 1300-1600 p/s | 700-750 p/s | 100-150 p/s |
| 27 000 p/s 27000/20/0.95=1400 |
13 800 p/s 13800/20/0.95=725 |
2 400 p/s 2400/20/0.95=125 |
| 60 500 p/s 60500/36/1.25=1350 |
30 900 p/s 30900/36/1.25=690 |
5 100 p/s 5100/36/1.25=115 |
It is important to mention that AMD and NVIDIA architectures are quite different and although AMD per CU performance is lower, there are more CUs per card in a similar price range. Moreover GPU performance is somewhat variable with number of factors including GPU/CPU combination and even a driver version. Please contact us if your recovery speed is noticeably different from the data above.
Trial version can be used to check format and hardware compatibility. It allows you to setup and test run any password search for up to 15 min per set. Recovered passwords are hidden behind the asterisks.
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