try opening the workbook in readonly mode. Readonly will make a copy of the
file and possibly let you get access to the functtions you need.

Workbooks.Open "c:\temp\book1.XLS", ReadOnly:=True

"dhiman" wrote:

I have a excel file which i need to read through msaccess. But the
problem is the excel file is protected with a password. So the file
itself is protected i cant get a handle of the excel object , if it
wud hav ebeen the sheet it was possible , but now how to unprtoect the
file from code without getting a handle of the excel file???

Is there a way i could unprotect the file and read the columns??