Unprotect an Excel file programmatically

Question

We\'re getting an Excel file from a client that has open protection and Write Reserve protection turned on. I want to remove the protection so I can open the Excel file wit

Answer 1

if you are on MacOS (or maybe Linux? not tested)

You have to install Microsoft Excel and xlwings

pip install xlwings

Then run this:

import pandas as pd
import xlwings as xw

def _process(filename):
  wb = xw.Book(filename)
  sheet = wb.sheets[0]
  df = sheet.used_range.options(pd.DataFrame, index=False, header=True).value
  wb.close()
  return df

Resources:

• Adapted from this script: https://davidhamann.de/2018/02/21/read-password-protected-excel-files-into-pandas-dataframe/

• xlwings documentation: https://docs.xlwings.org/en/stable/api.html