Crack and Migrate the Legacy Password Protected Excel VBA to index.html by Ourself

Despite living in 2025, we cannot escape the frustration of Excel VBA that work only on Window provided by some very old service.

Note that you can crack only that old Excel 97–2003 (.xls with macro = .xlsm)

Step 1 — Extract the content and Override Password

Change file extension of xlsm to zip then extract it like normal zip.

Go to xl folder and bring vbaProject.bin to Hex editor. The Hex editor can be Hex Editor Neo or other editor.

Step 2 — Zipping back and rename extension to xlsm

Now you zipping the file back and rename it as xlsm

Warning : You need to zip the CONTENT not the folder containing it

Step 3 — Reenter your new password

If you go straight to the Excel open VBA with Alt + f11 go to project it will pop Unexpected error (40230)

Tools>VBAProject Properties, go to Protection tab add new password and confirm

Here we go we can see the content in VBA now !

Step 4 — Move to index.html

Now the next question is where to migrate to. It should be:

1. Cross platform
   Window, OSX or even Mobile
2. No server
3. No complication
   of downloading (e.g., software), installing (e.g., python) , running anything (e.g., even web server)

Solution

1. index.html with script tag without any download so no need to run local file server to bypass security
2. Inside that also take Excel file as input through lib like NPM xlsx

You can get that solution by rewrite it quickly with help of AI.

Cheers !