Easily prevent special or certain characters from being typed in cells

In Excel working, have you ever tried to only prevent any special characters “$!@#...” from being typed in a range of cells? Or prevent some certain characters such as “abcd” only? Perhaps, you can apply some complex formulas with Data Validation function to solve it, however, if you have Kutools for Excel, you can easily forbid to type in any special characters or some certain characters in specified ranges by its Prevent Typing feature.

Prevent typing in any special characters

Prevent typing in certain characters

Click Kutools >> Prevent Typing >> Prevent Typing. See screenshot:

Prevent typing in any special characters

To prevent typing special characters in a selection, please do as below:

1. Select a column or a range of cells which you want to prevent special characters from being typed in.

2. Click Kutools > Prevent Typing > Prevent Typing. See screenshot:

3. In the popping Prevent Typing dialog, check Prevent type in special characters option. See screenshot:

4. Click Ok, a dialog pops out to remind you that it will remove data validation if you want to continue this utility. See screenshot:

5. Click Yes to continue, and another dialog pops out to show which cells have been prevented special characters entered. See screenshot:

6. Click OK to close the dialog. From now on, it will pop a dialog to warn you while you entering any one of special characters within the selection.

Prevent typing in certain characters

If you want to prevent typing in some certain characters, please do as this:

1. Select a range of cells or a column that you want to prevent some characters from being entered.

2. Click Kutools > Prevent Typing > Prevent Typing. See screenshot:

3. In the Prevent Typing dialog, check Prevent type in these chars option, and then enter the characters you want to prevent typing in selection into the below textbox. If you want to prevent characters in case sensitive manner, check Case sensitive checkbox. See screenshot:

4. Click Ok, a dialog pops out to remind you the data validation will be removed from the selection if you continue this utility. See screenshot:

5. Click Yes to continue, then a dialog pops out to remind you the selection has been prevented from entering specific characters you need. See screenshot:

6. Click OK to close the dialog. From now on, it will pop a dialog to warn you if you enter any one of the specified characters you have prevented from typing within the selection. See screenshot:

With Prevent Typing utility, you also can only allow some specific characters to be entered in a range of cells, for more detail, please to read Quickly only allow specific characters to be entered in a range of cells.

Demo: Prevent typing in any special or certain characters

Kutools for Excel

The functionality described above is just one of 300 powerful functions of Kutools for Excel.

Designed for Excel(Office) 2019, 2016, 2013, 2010, 2007 and Office 365. Free download and use for 60 days.