Locking Cells and Hiding Formulas

Locking cells prevents users from entering data or formulas into those cells. You can lock all the cells in the worksheet, or you can choose which cells you want to lock.

Locking cells is a two-step process: First you choose which cells you want to be locked and which unlocked. Then you choose to enable cell protection. The cells will not be shielded from edits until you lock them AND enable the protection. You may change the protection features on your worksheet by locking/unlocking individual cells or by enabling/disabling the protection.

By default, worksheet cells are locked and protection is disabled.

In addition to locking cells, you can hide cell formulas from appearing in the formula bar.

To lock and unlock cells and/or hide formulas in a worksheet:

1. Select the cells you want to lock or unlock.
2. Select Format > Cells and click the Protection tab, shown below.

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3. Click OK.
4. Enable protection. See below.

To enable and disable cell protection on a worksheet:

• Select Format > Sheet > Enable Protection. A check by the Enable Protection menu item means that locked cells cannot be entered or changed. It also means that cells designated Hidden that contain formulas will not display those formulas in the formula bar.

A user who attempts to enter data in a locked cell will see this dialog box.

When a locked cell is selected, the ENTER, SHIFT-ENTER, TAB, and SHIFT-TAB keys advance the selection to the next unlocked cell.

Note The Enable In-Cell Editing check box on the Edit tab in the Format Sheet dialog box also controls whether or not users can enter data in cells. For more information, see Controlling Worksheet Usage.