Problems with locking cells

Trying to lock/protect cells in your worksheets but having trouble?

This guide will get you up to speed in less than 5 minutes.

First, click here to watch our lesson on protecting cells.

Have you seen it but still have questions?

Read on…

Protecting cells

The essence of protecting cells in your worksheet is this:

First, you tell Excel which cells to lock/unlock.

Then, you activate the protection on the cells.

These are 2 separate actions.

1: Tell Excel which cells to lock

This is done by selecting the cells you want to have unlocked, so people can edit them.

Then right-click and select Format Cells -> Protection -> Make sure there’s no checkmark in the checkbox that says “Locked”.

Click OK.

2: Activate the protection

Now you’ve told Excel what cells to lock.

All there’s left for you to do is to activate the protection.

Right-click the active sheet and click Protect.

Set a password if you want (don’t forget it) and hit OK.

Now you’ve locked and unlocked specific cells so you and your colleagues can only edit the cells that you choose to unlock 🙂

Protecting the Excel file (+more)

There are plenty of ways to protect/lock your file, sheets, and cells.

Read our guide here, that goes in-depth with protecting an entire Excel file and much more.