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How to lock and protect selected cells from editing in Excel?

It's easy to lock and protect the whole worksheet or workbook with clicking the Protect Sheet button or Protect Workbook button under Review tab. However, sometimes you may need to lock and protect only specific cells or selections in a sheet. How would you like to do? This article will guide you to lock and protect selected cells or ranges in Excel with following steps:


Lock and protect selected cells from editing with modifying cell formatting

The following steps will guide you to unlock all cells in current firstly, lock required cells and ranges, and then protect current worksheet. Please do as follows:

1. Click the Arrow at the upper-left corner of worksheet to select all cells in active worksheet.

2. Right click any selected cell, and select the Format Cell item from the context menu. See below screenshot:

3. In the Format Cells dialog box, uncheck the Locked option under Protection tab, and click OK button. See above screenshot:

4. Select cells and ranges that you want to lock, right click and select the Format Cell item from the context menu.

5. In the Format Cells dialog box, check the Lock option under Protection tab, and click OK button. See above screenshot:

6. Click Review > Protect Sheet to protect current worksheet. See below screenshot:
doc lock cells 5

7. Enter a password in the blank box in the popping up Protect Sheet dialog box, and click the OK button. And then retype the password into the another Confirm Password dialog box, and click the OK button. See screenshot above.

And now it locks and protects only cells and ranges you selected in the Step 4, while unselect ranges are editable.


Lock and protect selected cells from editing with Kutools for Excel

Kutools for Excel's Selection Unlock utility and Selection Lock utility enable you to unlock/lock all selected cells with only one click, and then you can protect the whole worksheet with allowing unlocked cells to be edited.

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1. Click the Arrow at the upper-left corner of worksheet to select all cells in active worksheet.

2. Click Kutools Plus > Worksheet Design to activate the Design tab, and then click the Design > Unlock Cells. See screenshot:

Then a dialog box comes out to tell you selected cells have been unlocked. Just click the OK button to close it.

3. Select cells and ranges that you want to lock, and click the Design > Lock Cells.

Then click the OK button to close the popping up Kutools for Excel dialog box.

4. Click the Design > Protect Sheet or Review > Protect Sheet, and then you can follow the same steps we introduced in the first method to protect current worksheet.


Lock and protect selected cells from viewing by encrypting

If you have Kutools for Excel installed, it’s another Encrypt Cells utility can help you quickly lock and protect selected cells quickly. You can do as follows:

Kutools for Excel - Supercharge Excel with over 300 essential tools. Enjoy a full-featured 30-day FREE trial with no credit card required! Get It Now

1. Select the cells that you want to lock and protect, and click the Kutools Plus > Encrypt Cells > Encrypt Cells.

2. In the opening Encrypt Cells dialog box, type your password into both Password box and Confirm box, select one of mask types, and click the Ok button.

Then you will see all selected cells are encrypted at once as following screen shot shown:

Note: You can decrypt these encrypted cells with clicking Kutools Plus > Encrypt Cells > Decrypt Cells, and then type you password into opening dialog box.

Kutools for Excel - Supercharge Excel with over 300 essential tools. Enjoy a full-featured 30-day FREE trial with no credit card required! Get It Now


Demo: lock and protect selected cells in Excel


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Quickly mass password protect multiple/all worksheets in Excel

Normally Excel's Protect Sheet feature can only protect active sheet. However, Kutools for Excel's Protect Worksheet utility enables to batch protect multiple (or all) worksheets with same password by only 2 steps.
ad protect multiple sheets

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Comments (93)
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This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
Thanks - so very very helpful - instant answer to my needs - very grateful this exists
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
Thank u for helps.
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
Please i want know lock some of the cells in my worksheet, how do i go about
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
Hi Daniel,

Both the first and the second methods can help and guide you to lock only part of cells in a worksheet. Just follow the tutorial.
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
i need to protect a particular cells , which can only view and unable to edit??
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
Hi,
Both of the first method and the second method can protect some certain cells, and make these cells visible but not editable.
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
how to protect single row or columm
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
we cant protect a specific cell or column, so kindly suggest how to protect single column or row protect
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
Great! it helped a lot .
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
Thanks Bro thanks i done it.....it will be helpful in my future work
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
Hi, I followed method 1 to the letter along with hiding the cells too. ie I have approx 120 rows & 20 cols and selected rows 6 to 15 to lock and it works fine, they are also hidden but, now I cannot change the formatting eg make bold etc on other cells though I can change the contents. The bold option is greyed out :-( Have been through this a couple of times and it is consistent. I am using Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010. It doesnt matter if I unhide either :-( The dialog box re "Protect sheet" always also selects unlocked when I only want to select locked cells, there seems no way around this, what can I do ?
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
thanks i done it.....it will be helpful in my future work
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