3 ways to protect your Excel data with confidence
by
Application:
Microsoft Excel 2002/2003/2004/2007
Operating Systems:
Microsoft Windows, Macintosh
Even the most experienced Excel users have faltered when it comes to protecting their Excel data effectively and correctly. Don’t get overwhelmed by jargon-ridden books and misleading Internet information. We’ll give you the full story on how to protect your Excel data without fail.
To protect our Excel data on three different levels, we’ll:
• Secure an entire workbook so that only users who know the password can open or modify the workbook.
• Preserve the overall layout and structure of our workbook.
• Protect specific parts of our worksheets, such as cell contents, charts and more.
If you share workbooks, you probably grumble over the changes your colleagues make to your workbooks’ layout. Or maybe someone inadvertently deleted a formula that you worked hard to build. To preserve your workbooks and their individual worksheets, you need to understand the different levels of protection Excel offers. We’ll familiarize you with Excel’s three defensive measures: workbook protection, worksheet protection and range-level protection.
1. Lock down the entire workbook
Workbook protection affords you sweeping security because it protects the entire workbook. You can even add a password if you want only certain people (or just yourself!) to access the workbook data.
To protect your entire workbook with a password:
1. Launch Excel and open the workbook you’d like to protect.
2. Choose Tools | Protection | Protect Workbook from the menu bar to open the Protect Workbook dialog box.
3. Select the Windows check box if you want to preserve your window arrangement. The Structure check box is selected by default.
4. Enter a password in the Password (Optional) text box if you’d like to assign one to your workbook, as shown in Figure A.
5. Click OK. If you entered a password, re-enter the password in the Confirm Password window that displays and click OK again.
A:
If you don’t assign a password to your protected workbook, any savvy Excel user can turn off your protection and make changes.
Just remember that you cannot retrieve your password if you forget it later. Make sure you choose a memorable password so that you don’t lose access to your workbook.
When you’ve protected your workbook for structure, you’ll notice that users can’t insert, delete, rename, move or copy worksheets within the workbook. You also can’t change a worksheet tab’s color. If you protect the workbook for windows, you can’t rearrange worksheets, add or remove a window split, or freeze/unfreeze windows. But you can still hide or unhide worksheets.
To turn off workbook protection:
1. Choose Tools | Protection | Unprotect Workbook from the menu bar to display the Unprotect Workbook dialog box.
2. Enter your password (passwords are case-sensitive) in the text box provided.
3. Click OK to disable the workbook’s protection.
2. Prevent unwanted worksheet changes
There are two steps to protecting a worksheet in your workbook:
4. Lock the items you want to protect.
5. Protect your worksheet.
The locking concept trips up most Excel users, so let’s ta
