How to Lock Specific Cells in an Excel Worksheet There might be times when you want to lock certain cells from being changed but still allow users to adjust other cells in a worksheet. Navigate to the Review tab. Now, this post will show you how to do this. All of the cells which contain formulas will be selected. Step 2: Now, select all the cells that contain formulas. I haven't been able to lock anything in Excel 2016. Now when you view your spreadsheet, the formula in cell A3 will no longer appear in the edit bar when the cell is selected.
Go to Review tab and under Changes group, click on Protect Sheet. I am having difficulty locking specific cells in a formula laden worksheet in Microsoft Excel 2016. Here, you have to type the password that will be demanded later, when you will unprotect the sheet. When the Format Cells window appears, select the Protection tab. Step 3: Select the Review tab, click on the Protect Sheet. Enter an Error message to appear when data entered does not conform to the validation rules. By default, it allows all users to select the locked and unlocked cells, but you can change this based on your own needs.
Like, you have created an entire years surveillance data of the company and wanted your juniors to mark their remark on it. For example, it can be difficult to move, copy, and paste content from merged cells. Step 2: Select the Review tab and then click on the Protect Sheet. You can always ask an expert in the , get support in the , or suggest a new feature or improvement on. Click Protection, check the Locked checkbox. To access more options, hover your mouse over the icon, then click the drop-down arrow. The multiple locks and unlocks are confusing.
Excel allows you to modify column width and row height in different ways, including wrapping text and merging cells. Answer: As you can see, currently the formulas are visible. To unlock them, you can still click on the Unprotect Sheet under the Review tab. By default, all the cells in an Excel sheet are locked. Sometimes you even want to protect the entire sheet from being changed.
You may also refer to the below Microsoft article for more information and check if it helps. In our example, we'll hide columns C, D, and E. To do this, select the Review tab in the toolbar at the top of the screen. I have difficulty understanding why the cells are initially set to Lock and you can enter data and calculate results. I cannot lock individual cells in Microsoft Excel 2016. When inserting rows and columns, make sure you select the entire row or column by clicking the heading.
Inserting, deleting, moving, and hiding After you've been working with a workbook for a while, you may find that you want to insert new columns or rows, delete certain rows or columns, move them to a different location in the worksheet, or even hide them. However, sometimes you don't want the cell reference to change when you fill formulas into other cells, and in that case you should use an absolute reference instead. And a Format Cells dialog box will pop out. You may enter a password to protect the sheet if you wish. Note: Steps in the above article applies to Office 2016 also.
How can I do this? Sometimes you have to share the Excel sheet with some other users also. If you have provided the password while protecting the sheet, it will ask you for the same password to unprotect the sheet. Absolute references can be created in two ways, and Peter shows both of them in the demo below. This means that the cells are ready to be locked when you protect the workbook or worksheet. This button allows you to choose how Excel formats these cells. Another more secure way to protect your excel document is encrypted it with an opening password to prevent others from accessing to the workbook. Unlocking will take effect after you protect the worksheet.
Then go to lock the select cells. Step 5: A Format Cells dialog box will get opened. To center across selection: Merging can be useful for organizing your data, but it can also create problems later on. Then all the cells get locked as you required. Luckily, Microsoft Excel 2016 and other of its earlier versions allow you to lock cells and prevent them from being modified. He also shows how to protect a sheet so that the content will be impossible to change and how to exclude some cells from that protection.
Select the whole worksheet with Ctrl + A, and right click, choose Format Cells from the context menu. This will unlock the selected cells. If you select only a cell in the row or column, the Insert command will only insert a new cell. Editor's Note: This tutorial was written for Excel 2016, but still applies to modern versions of Excel. To unlock the cells, just need to click on the Unprotect Sheet under the Review tab to 2016. The easiest and most common way of preventing people from playing with your formulas is to lock and protect cells which contain formulas in your worksheet. In case, you want to lock all the cells in a worksheet or protect a specific cell and allow some cells of the excel file to be changeable then you can also do this.