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How to prevent changes to the whole workbook?

Author Sun Last modified

In some special cases, you may want to prevent any changes to a specific workbook after you finishing the edit. The most direct and easiest way to handle this problem is to protect the whole workbook. But in Excel’s built-in utilities, the Protect Workbook just can protect the workbook’s structure and window. How can you prevent any changes to the whole workbook?

Protect sheets one by one with Excel

Protect workbook with Kutools for Excel

arrow blue right bubble Protect sheets one by one with Excel

To protect the whole workbook from changing, you can protect its sheets one by one to achieve this goal.

1. Click Review > Protect Sheet, and in the Protect Sheet dialog, enter the password for protecting the sheet, and then you can uncheck the operation in the Allow all users of this worksheet to section to prevent all users from doing changes. In default, a protected sheets only allow users selecting locked cells and unlocked cells. See screenshot:

A screenshot of the Protect Sheet option in Excel
A screenshot of the Protect Sheet dialog in Excel where a password can be set to protect the sheet

2. Click OK, and reenter the password again, and click OK to finishing the protecting. See screenshot:

A screenshot of the Protect Sheet dialog in Excel where the user re-enters the password to complete protection

3. Repeat the above steps to protect all sheets in the workbook

arrow blue right bubble Protect workbook with Kutools for Excel

If there are several sheets needed to protect, the above method may not be boring, but what if there are hundreds or thousands of worksheets in a workbook needed to be protected? Kutools for Excel’s Protect Worksheet can quickly protect all sheets in a workbook.

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1. Click Kutools Plus > Protect Worksheet. See screenshot:

A screenshot of the Protect Worksheet option under the Kutools Plus tab in Excel

2. A Protect Worksheet dialog pops out, and all the sheets in the workbook are listing in it, in default, all the sheet tabs are checked, and click Ok to go to the second Protect Worksheet dialog, and type the password into both the Password textbox and the Retype Password textbox, and then to specify the operations you allow users to do in the Allow all users of this worksheet to section.

A screenshot of the Protect Worksheet dialog where password and user permissions are set

3. Click Ok, and the whole workbook is protected from any changes by all users.

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