Pages

How To Protect A Worksheet In Excel

Sometimes you may want to protect a worksheet before sending it to others. So in this post I will show you how to protect a worksheet.

First go to the worksheet you want to protect. I’m going to protect Sheet2 from this sample file.


Go to the sheet you want to protect

Next go to the “REVIEW” tab.

Go to the Review tab

Then click on the “Protect sheet” icon of the “Changes” group.

Click on the Protect sheet icon

“Protect Sheet” window will open like this. Now select operations you want to permit your users to carry out in the locked sheet. By default first two operations (“Select locked cells” and “Select unlocked cells”) are selected. For this sample file, I will proceed with default selection.

Protect sheet window

Next, enter a password to unprotect the sheet and click OK.

Enter password to unprotect sheet

Excel will ask you to reenter the password. Reenter the password and click OK.

Reenter password

Now the worksheet is protected. If you try to change a value or enter a new value, Excel will display a message like this.

Warning message

Also lots of icons are disabled as I haven’t permitted the users other activities than selecting locked and unlocked cells.

Icons are disabled