How to lock and protect formulas in Excel?
When you create a worksheet, sometimes you need to use some formulas, and you don’t want other users to change, edit or delete the formulas. 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. Please go to lock and protect the formulas as follows:
Lock and protect formulas with Format Cells and Protect Sheet functions
Lock and protect formulas with Worksheet Design 
Lock and protect formulas with Format Cells and Protect Sheet functions
By default, all cells on a worksheet are locked, so you must unlock all of the cells first.
1. Select the whole worksheet with Ctrl + A, and right click, choose Format Cells from the context menu.
2. And a Format Cells dialog box will pop out. Click Protection, and unchecked the Locked option. Click OK. The whole worksheet has been unlocked.
3. Then click Home > Find & Select > Go To Special, and a Go To Special dialog box will appear. Check Formulas from Select option, and then click OK. See screenshot:
4. All of the cells which contain formulas will be selected.
5. Then go to lock the select cells. Right click on the selected cells, and choose Format Cells from the context menu, and a Format Cells dialog box will display. Click Protection, check the Locked checkbox. See screenshot:
6. And then click Review > Protect Sheet, and a Protect Sheet dialog box will pop out, you can enter the password in the Passwordto unprotect sheet box. See screenshot:
7. Then click OK. And another Confirm Password dialog box will appear. Reenter your password. And click OK.
And then all cells which contain formulas have been locked and protected. In this case, you cannot modify the formulas, but you can edit other cells.
Lock and protect formulas with Worksheet Design
If you have installed Kutools for Excel, you can lock and protect formulas quickly by using Worksheet Design utility. | Kutools for Excel, with more than 120 handy functions, makes your jobs easier. | ||
After installing Kutools for Excel, please do as below:(Free Download Kutools for Excel Now!)
1. Click Enterprise > Worksheet Design to enable the Design group. See screenshot:
2. Then click Highlight Formulas to highlight all formula cells. See screenshot:
3.Select all the highlighted cells and click Selection Lock to lock the formulas. And there is a dialog pops out to remind you that the fomulas cannot lock until protect the sheet. See screenshots:
4. Now click Protect Sheet to type the password to protect the sheet. See screenshots:
Note
1. Now the formulas are locked and protected, and you can click Close Design to disable the Design tab.
2. If you want to unprotect the sheet, you just need to click Worksheet Design > Unprotect Sheet.
In Worksheet Design group, you can highlight unlock cell, name range and so on.
Lock and Protect Formulas
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Comments
Well it looks good, but I have followed it at least 6 times and each time it does not lock any of my formulaes.
For Example : I Have Ticket Number 425665 with Three Site ID's UW_GJ_2904 , UW_GJ_1995 , UW_GJ_0960 , So i need to copy all three site id's from 1st Excel sheet to 2nd excel sheet .... But as per vlookup only first site ID is Reflecting UW_GJ_2904 is Reflecting in all three places, which it should not(in some cases for single ticket Ex: 425771 : only one site UW_GJ_0514 will be there, it was reflecting properly, The problem is for each ticket which has more than one site ID is not reflecting properly)
First Excel Sheet :
Ticket Site id time
425665 UW_GJ_2904 1/21/14 4:51 PM
425665 UW_GJ_1995 1/21/14 4:51 PM
425665 UW_GJ_0960 1/21/14 4:51 PM
Second Excel Sheet:
ticket site id time
425665 UW_GJ_2904 1/21/14 4:51 PM
425665 UW_GJ_2904 1/21/14 4:51 PM
425665 UW_GJ_2904 1/21/14 4:51 PM
if it is only one id its Reflecting properly
First excel sheet:
425771 UW_GJ_0514 1/21/14 7:44 PM
Second Excel Sheet:
425771 UW_GJ_0514 1/21/14 7:44 PM
This. Thank you!!
Thanks so much for saving my hardwork.
Ali
Please, advise if it is possible to lock the formula cells in excel so that it is possible to delete other bulk data from the file without deleting the formulas? With the method above, it is not possible to select whole data with ctrl+A and delete.
Thank you!
Glad to know to lock the cells
It is convience for all.
Best regards
Very helpful, thank you so very much!!Blessings !
this is of great help!
kindly help.
and well explanation
Thanks for this help
I have an Allocation Sheet, which has DAYS and NIGHTS on if we do DAYS Nights formula is strikethrough, and vice versa, but change DAYS to NIGHTS, but not from strikethrough!
Cannot change FONT colour either.