If you’re trying to unlock a password-protected Excel file and can’t find an application supposed to do that without advanced configuration options, you may want to have a look at Excel Password Recovery Master.

As you may find out by reading its name, this program was developed with a single goal in mind: help users recover Excel documents passwords with minimum effort.

Instead of providing multiple password recovery modes, Excel Password Recovery Master combines them all and interacts with its users through a very simple interface. An Internet connection is however required, as files are decrypted online.

It offers support for most Excel versions, including MS Excel 97 / 2000 / XP / 2003 / 2007 / 2010, which means the following formats can be used: *.xls, *.xlt, *.xla, *.xlsx, *.xlsm, *.xltx and *.xltm.

A one-window interface is supposed to take care of everything, letting you recover open and write passwords, as well as workbook and shared workbook passwords for any of the aforementioned formats.

If you are curious to find out how effective this little tool actually is, it is worth mentioning that the program sometimes fails the test when it has to deal with longer and more complex passwords, but the good thing is that it remains very light on hardware resources all the time.

The main difference between this and other document recovery apps is that you need an Internet connection to use Excel Password Recovery Master, which may be quite bad news for some of the users.

All in all however, it deserves a chance, mostly because it provides an instant password recovery process, while offering an impressively simple interface.