Excel problems

I've got a problem with excel and hopefully someone can help (google is not my friend this time) I've a tab which is password protected and a macro which unlocks it, checks which cells are black, makes sure they are locked for editing and then relocks it. All other cells can be selected. The problem is that i can't manually unlock the tab even if i simply copy the password from the vba code (less quote marks obviously)! Password crackers return an unhashed password which does work, and if i set this to be the password in the code then i can manaually unlock, but i don't get why I can't use the one i want. Any one have experience with this problem? thanks Ed