Recover sheet protection password in Excel

You cannot recover THE password, but you can unprotect the sheet(The hash used to protect the sheet is quite prone to collisions in the old versions of excel, so generating a collision is quite fast here).

There are scripts availale the will brute force open your sheet within a very short amount of time.

Take a look here for example: http://www.theofficeexperts.com/VBASamples/Excel02.htm

Here's the code:

Sub PasswordBreaker()
  'Author unknown but submitted by brettdj of www.experts-exchange.com

  Dim i As Integer, j As Integer, k As Integer
  Dim l As Integer, m As Integer, n As Integer
  Dim i1 As Integer, i2 As Integer, i3 As Integer
  Dim i4 As Integer, i5 As Integer, i6 As Integer
  On Error Resume Next
  For i = 65 To 66: For j = 65 To 66: For k = 65 To 66
  For l = 65 To 66: For m = 65 To 66: For i1 = 65 To 66
  For i2 = 65 To 66: For i3 = 65 To 66: For i4 = 65 To 66
  For i5 = 65 To 66: For i6 = 65 To 66: For n = 32 To 126


 ActiveSheet.Unprotect Chr(i) & Chr(j) & Chr(k) & _
      Chr(l) & Chr(m) & Chr(i1) & Chr(i2) & Chr(i3) & _
      Chr(i4) & Chr(i5) & Chr(i6) & Chr(n)
  If ActiveSheet.ProtectContents = False Then
      MsgBox "One usable password is " & Chr(i) & Chr(j) & _
          Chr(k) & Chr(l) & Chr(m) & Chr(i1) & Chr(i2) & _
          Chr(i3) & Chr(i4) & Chr(i5) & Chr(i6) & Chr(n)
   ActiveWorkbook.Sheets(1).Select
   Range("a1").FormulaR1C1 = Chr(i) & Chr(j) & _
          Chr(k) & Chr(l) & Chr(m) & Chr(i1) & Chr(i2) & _
          Chr(i3) & Chr(i4) & Chr(i5) & Chr(i6) & Chr(n)
       Exit Sub
  End If
  Next: Next: Next: Next: Next: Next
  Next: Next: Next: Next: Next: Next


End Sub