Thursday, 9 February 2017

Breaking Into (Your Own and nobody else's!) VBA Project If Password Forgotten

So, sometimes I am asked by a client to unlock an Excel VBA project because a prior developer has left the project locked and left the client's employment.

Clearly, there is a legal duty to establish that they do own the code, if not then I believe this is a criminal offence under some jurisdictions (certainly UK) and one should refuse.

Once legal issues are resolved then there is the technology.  One once used to be able to use a Hex editor and edit some bytes in an Excel file to crack open the VBA.   This SO post is remarkably ingenuous in that hacks the password dialog box, quite extraordinary.

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