How to protect some cells, but NOT entire sheet?

njabeen · General User Joined: 04 Jul 2008 Posts: 8

How do I protect some cells in a sheet, but not all of them?

Because I tried selecting the cells I want to protect by going Format Cells > Cell Protection > Protected, but then it says that cells are only protected when the whole sheet is protected...but I don't want to protect the whole sheet! And of course after that I can't unprotect only certain cells because the whole sheet is protected! So I unprotect the sheet and there we have the beginning of a vicious cycle.

So i'm majorly stuck.

Basically the situation is this: I have cells where data is entered to be used in a formula in another cell...these are the cells I need to keep unprotected so that the input data can be changed from time to time (i don't save this data,i'm kinda using it like you would a calculator). The cells with the formulas and result need to be protected because I'm not the only one whos going to be using this spreadsheet and I don't want people using it to mess up the formulas...they just need to enter the data and see the result without being able to change it.

So - how do i do that? Any help would be much appreciated!

thx
-NJ

JohnV · Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2008 10:37 am Post subject:

Select the cells you do not want protected, Format > Cells > Cell Protection tab and remove the check from Protected. Then Tools > Protect Document > Sheet.

njabeen · General User Joined: 04 Jul 2008 Posts: 8

Thanks! clearly the simplest things escape me... Embarassed

JohnV · Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2008 6:34 am Post subject:

No, it's not the "simplest thing" or intuitive, but it does work when you figure it out. However, if you don't do it often, you have to figure it out the next time too. At least that's the situation for some of us older types.

David · Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2008 8:20 am Post subject: