About worksheet and workbook protection

Microsoft Excel provides several layers of protection to control who can access and change your Excel data.

Note The features in Microsoft Excel related to hiding data and protecting worksheets and workbooks with passwords are not intended to be mechanisms for securing data or protecting confidential information in Excel. You can use these features to present information more clearly by hiding data or formulas that might confuse some users. These features also help prevent other users from making accidental changes to data. Excel doesn't encrypt data that is hidden or locked in a workbook. With enough time, users can obtain and modify all the data in a workbook, as long as they have access to it. To help prevent modification of data and to help protect confidential information, limit access to any Excel files containing such information by storing them in locations available only to authorized users.

Worksheet protection You can protect elements on a worksheet— such as cells with formulas— from all user access, or you can grant individual users access to the ranges you specify.

Workbook-level protection You can apply protection to workbook elements and you can protect a workbook file from viewing and changes. If a workbook is shared you can protect it from being returned to exclusive use and prevent the change history from being deleted.

Protecting elements from all users You can prevent users from inserting, deleting, and formatting rows and columns, from changing the contents of locked cells, and from moving the cursor to cells that are locked or to cells that are unlocked.

By default all cells on a worksheet are locked. Before you protect a worksheet, you can unlock cells where you want users to enter and change data, in two ways. To unlock cells for all users, you can use the Protection tab of the Format Cells dialog box. To unlock cells for specific users, you can use the Allow Users to Edit Ranges dialog box. Any ranges that you specify in this dialog box and don't assign a password for are also unlocked for all users. The cells you leave locked become protected only after you protect the worksheet.

Other worksheet features and elements for which you can restrict access for all users include hyperlinks, sorting, AutoFiltering, PivotTable reports, graphic objects, and scenarios. These protections apply to all users and the entire worksheet, not to individual users or data ranges.

For chart sheets, you can protect the contents of the chart from changes, and you can protect any graphic objects on the sheet, such as text boxes, from being changed or deleted. A protected chart sheet continues to be updated whenever the source data for the chart changes.

Giving specific users access to protected ranges If you have the Windows 2000 operating system, you can allow specific users to edit specific cells or ranges. Users to whom you grant access can edit the cells even if the cells are locked. Your access restrictions take effect only after you protect the worksheet.

The users you specify in the Permissions for range dialog box can automatically edit the range without entering the password. Other users are prompted for the password, and users who enter the password can then edit the range. If a cell belongs to more than one range, users who are authorized to edit any of the ranges can then edit the cell. If a user attempts to edit multiple cells at once and is authorized to edit some but not all of those cells, the user will be prompted to select and edit the cells one by one.

Protecting workbook elements You can prevent users from adding or deleting worksheets, or displaying hidden worksheets. You can also prevent users from changing the sizes or positions of the windows you set up to display a workbook. These protections apply to the entire workbook.

To hide an entire workbook so that users can't see it but can gain access to contents such as macros, use the Hide command on the Window menu, and then save the hidden workbook.

Protecting a shared workbook You can protect a shared workbook so that users cannot return it to exclusive use or delete the change history log. If you want to require a password to remove this type of protection, you must apply the protection before you share the workbook. Applying the protection automatically turns on sharing. Unprotecting these features turns off sharing and deletes all of the saved change history.

Alternatively, you can protect the sharing and change history without a password. You can apply this protection when a workbook is already shared, and then unprotecting won't turn off sharing or delete the change history.

Protecting a workbook file from viewing and editing You can help restrict who can open and use the data in a workbook file by requiring a password to view or save changes to the file. You can set two separate passwords, one that users must enter to open and view the file, and another that users must enter before they can edit and save changes to the file. These passwords apply to the workbook file and are separate from the protection provided by the Protect Workbook dialog box.