Lock all cells in excel

Lock cells to protect them

Suppose that your boss wants you to protect an entire workbook, but also wants to be able to change a few cells after you enable protection on the workbook. Before you enabled password protection, you had unlocked some cells in the workbook. Now that your boss is done with the workbook, you can lock these cells.

Follow these steps to lock cells in a worksheet:

Select the cells you want to lock.

On the Home tab, in the Alignment group, click the small arrow to open the Format Cells popup window.

On the Protection tab, select the Locked check box, and then click OK to close the popup.

Note: If you try these steps on a workbook or worksheet you haven’t protected, you’ll see the cells are already locked. This means that the cells are ready to be locked when you protect the workbook or worksheet.

On the Review tab in the ribbon, in the Changes group, select either Protect Sheet or Protect Workbook, and then reapply protection. See Protect a worksheet or Protect a workbook.

Tip: It’s a best practice to unlock any cells that you may want to change before you protect a worksheet or a workbook, but you can also unlock them after you apply protection. To remove protection, simply remove the password.

In addition to protecting workbooks and worksheets, you can also protect formulas.

Excel for the web can’t lock cells or specific areas of a worksheet.

If you want to lock cells or protect specific areas, click Open in Excel and lock cells to protect them or lock or unlock specific areas of a protected worksheet.

Need more help?

You can always ask an expert in the Excel Tech Community or get support in the Answers community.

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Lock Cells

You can lock cells in Excel if you want to protect cells from being edited.

Lock All Cells

By default, all cells are locked. However, locking cells has no effect until you protect the worksheet.

1. Select all cells.

2. Right click, and then click Format Cells (or press CTRL + 1).

3. On the Protection tab, you can verify that all cells are locked by default.

4. Click OK or Cancel.

All cells are locked now. To unprotect a worksheet, right click on the worksheet tab and click Unprotect Sheet. The password for the downloadable Excel file is «easy».

Lock Specific Cells

To lock specific cells in Excel, first unlock all cells. Next, lock specific cells. Finally, protect the sheet.

1. Select all cells.

2. Right click, and then click Format Cells (or press CTRL + 1).

3. On the Protection tab, uncheck the Locked check box and click OK.

4. For example, select cell A1 and cell A2.

5. Right click, and then click Format Cells (or press CTRL + 1).

6. On the Protection tab, check the Locked check box and click OK.

Again, locking cells has no effect until you protect the worksheet.

Cell A1 and cell A2 are locked now. To edit these cells, you have to unprotect the sheet. The password for the downloadable Excel file is «easy». You can still edit all other cells.

Lock Formula Cells

To lock all cells that contain formulas, first unlock all cells. Next, lock all formula cells. Finally, protect the sheet.

1. Select all cells.

2. Right click, and then click Format Cells (or press CTRL + 1).

3. On the Protection tab, uncheck the Locked check box and click OK.

4. On the Home tab, in the Editing group, click Find & Select.

5. Click Go To Special.

6. Select Formulas and click OK.

Excel selects all formula cells.

7. Press CTRL + 1.

8. On the Protection tab, check the Locked check box and click OK.

Note: if you also check the Hidden check box, users cannot see the formula in the formula bar when they select cell A2, B2, C2 or D2.

Again, locking cells has no effect until you protect the worksheet.

All formula cells are locked now. To edit these cells, you have to unprotect the sheet. The password for the downloadable Excel file is «easy». You can still edit all other cells.

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Simple Ways to Lock Cells in Excel Workbook

You can lock cells on your Excel worksheet to prevent other people from deliberately or accidentally changing, deleting, or moving data in a worksheet. You have put a lot of hard work in your spreadsheet and you do not want anybody to inadvertently make any changes to it. In this article, we will teach you how to lock cells in Excel exactly.

For example, you have the team status report worksheet, and you want the other team members only to add data in specific cells and not modify anything else you can lock certain cells in Excel. This worksheet protection makes only certain parts of the sheet editable, and other users will not be correct data in any other part of the sheet. This is not a security feature. It just prevents users from reorganizing locked cells in the worksheet. You can lock the cells to prevent them from being modified with all the different versions of Microsoft Excel.

Part 1. How to Lock All Cells in Excel?

By default, all cells will be locked when you protect a workbook or spreadsheet. This means that they cannot be deleted, edited, or reformatted. You can easily protect all the data and formula in a single worksheet just by applying the protect sheet option. To protect the figures and data in all the separate sheets in a workbook, the protect sheet option must be applied individually to every sheet.

Part 2. How to Lock Specific Cells in Excel?

Excel has specific tools that protect certain worksheet elements which can be applied with or without a password. Protecting your valuable data from change is a two-step process.

• Locking specific objects or cells such as graphics or charts in a worksheet.
• Applying the Protect Sheet option.

All data and worksheet elements can be changed until both the steps are complete. Locked cells can be unlocked anytime by the person who locked the cells in the first place. With the following steps, you can learn how to protect and lock cells in Excel versions 2003, 2007, 2010 and 2016.

Option 1. Lock and Protect Cells in Excel 2010, 2013 and 2016

1. Open the Excel worksheet that has the cells you want to lock.

2. Right-click on the cells that you want to lock and select ‘Format Cells.’

3. Click on the tab named ‘Protection.’

4. Tick the box next to tab labeled ‘Locked’ and click Ok.

5. At the top your Excel spreadsheet there is a tab labeled ‘Review,’ click on it next.

6. Look for the ‘Protect Sheet’ tab in the ‘Changes’ group and click on it.

7. Tick the box next to ‘Protect worksheet and contents of locked cells,’

8. Enter a password in the text box ‘Password to unprotect sheet’ and click Ok.

9. Retype your password in the text box ‘Reenter password to proceed’ and click Ok.

The cells that you selected are now protected and can only be unlocked by selecting them once more and entering your chosen password.

Option 2. Lock and Protect Cells in Excel 2003

Step 1. Open the Excel sheet that contains the cells you wish to lock.

Step 2. Right-click on the cells that you have selected and from the drop-down menu select ‘format cells.’

Step 3. Click on ‘protection’ and put a tick against ‘Locked’ and then click Ok.

Step 4. Open the ‘Tools’ menu at the top of your Excel spreadsheet and select ‘Protection.’

Step 5. Click on ‘Protect Sheet.’ Tick the box labeled ‘Protect worksheet and content of locked cells.’

Step 6. Type your password in the ‘Password to unprotect sheet’ and click Ok.

Step 7. Reenter the password and click Ok.

All selected cells are now locked and can only be unlocked by using your initial password. Ensure that you do not store any personal or sensitive information in the Excel spreadsheet. To ensure maximum security protection:

• Use modern versions of Excel with enhanced data encryption.
• Store your Excel files that have sensitive information on an encrypted hard drive.
• Protect the workbook structure to stop other users from moving, deleting, adding, or renaming your sheets.
• Use strong passwords to protect your sheets.

In the older versions of Excel anyone who had a basic knowledge of VBA could unlock the sheets easily. Although the recent versions of Excel use sophisticated methods of sheet protection they can also be easily unlocked.

If you have forgotten the password for your Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, you can still unlock it by using PassFab for Excel. This program allows you to recover forgotten or lost passwords for all xls/xlsx files created by using any Excel version from 1997 – 2016 irrespective of their complexity and length. You can download this Excel xls/xlsx password recovery for free.

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How to Lock Cells in Excel & Google Sheets

This tutorial demonstrates how to lock cells in Excel and Google Sheets.

Lock All Cells

In Excel, you can lock all cells for editing. To do this, password protect a sheet.

1. By default, all cells in Excel have the property Locked turned on, and you can check this (1) by selecting all cells (click the arrow in the upper left corner of the gridlines), (2) right-click anywhere in the selected area, and (3) choose Format Cells…

1. In the Format Cells window, go to the Protection tab, and here you can see that Locked is checked. This means that, when you protect your sheet, all cells are locked for editing.

1. Now you can protect the sheet. In the Ribbon, go to Review > Protect Sheet.

1. In the Protect Sheet window, enter a password and press OK. As you can see, after you protect the worksheet, users will only be able to select cells.

1. In the pop-up window, confirm the password and press OK.

Now, if you try to edit any cell in the sheet, you’ll get the message that the sheet is protected and can’t be edited.

To be able to edit cells again, unprotect the sheet.

Lock Specific Cells

To lock only a specific range of cells (for example, B1:B3), follow these steps:

1. Select all cells (by clicking on the arrow in the upper left corner of the gridlines), (2) right-click anywhere in the selected area, and (3) choose Format Cells…

1. In the Format Cells window, (1) go to the Protection tab, (2) uncheck Locked, and (3) click OK.

1. Now, (1) selectcells you want to lock (here, B1:B3), (2) right-click anywhere in the selected area, and (3) choose Format Cells…

1. In the Format Cells window, (1) go to the Protection tab, (2) check Locked, and (3) click OK.

As a result, you can edit all cells except B1:B3 which are locked.

In the picture above, you can see that cell B4 is edited, but when you try to edit any cell in the range B1:B3, you get the error message.

Note that you also have the option to lock only formatting.

Lock Cells in Google Sheets

You can also lock cells for editing in Google Sheets, using protected ranges.

1. Select all cells (by clicking on the arrow in the upper left corner of the gridlines), (2) right-click anywhere in the selected area, and (3) choose Protect range.

1. In the window on the right side, choose Set permissions.

1. Here, you can choose to only show a warning, or to specify who can edit the range (you or another specific user). Then click Done.

Now, only selected users can edit the range, while for all others, cells are locked for editing.

Note: To see, instead, how to lock a cell reference, see Freeze Cell in Formula or How to Anchor a Cell.

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