Locking and hiding cells

You can lock and hide cells to help protect information you don’t want to be altered or seen. For this to be effective you also need to protect your spreadsheet (see Protecting a spreadsheet). When you protect a spreadsheet, it is only the locked and hidden cells that are affected.

Since it is possible to alter a cell that is hidden, even though it is protected and the changes would not be visible on screen, it is a good idea to lock any hidden cells.

These features can be useful, for instance, if someone else uses your spreadsheet and you do not want them to accidentally alter values or formulas in certain fields or to view sensitive information.

To lock or hide cells:

  1. Select the cell or range of cells you want to lock or hide.

  2. Click on either or both of the Lock and Hide buttons image\lockhide.gif on the formatting bar.

Alternatively, select Cells from the Format menu and then click on the Cell Attributes tab in the "Format" dialog box.

  1. Click on the checkbox next to Lock to lock the cells, and on the one next to Hide to hide the cells. You can choose both to lock and hide cells.

  2. Click on the OK button to close the "Format" dialog box.

  3. The cells will be redrawn with hatching over them (forward slashes for Hide, backward slashes for Lock) to help you remember which cells have been locked or hidden, or both, while you are designing your spreadsheet.

Once you have locked or hidden cells, you should protect the spreadsheet. The Lock and Hide commands are then activated (see Protecting a spreadsheet) and the hatching disappears.

You can unlock and unhide cells again by selecting them and clicking on the Lock and Hide buttons on the formatting bar or by going into the Cell Attributes page of the "Format" dialog box to cancel the selections. First, though, you need to unprotect your spreadsheet.

Note: Once a document is protected you cannot lock and hide cells, and so the Lock and Hide buttons and their equivalents in the "Format" dialog box are made inactive.