Microsoft Excel Tutorial - How to Protect a Worksheet

This tutorial will walk you through how you can password protect a Microsoft Excel worksheet. Once you have protected a worksheet then it can only be modified if you know the password. This tutorial will also show you how to unprotect a worksheet.

If you have multiple people that use the same machine or if a worksheet is on a shared network drive to be viewed only by certain people, you could protect the worksheet with a password. In the example in this tutorial, the worksheet that is protected is a Microsoft Excel file that is stored on the local hard drive but the tutorial will work for any Excel worksheet stored even on an external storage device.

1. Open Microsoft Excel

Open any Excel file that has a worksheet that you want to protect. Otherwise, create a new worksheet and save it to your hard drive.

2. Make Changes

For this example, we will be testing the protection by first making sure we can modify the cells and make any changes we want. This will ensure the worksheet is not currently protected.

3. Click Tools -> Protection -> Protect Sheets

A "Protect Sheet" window will open that has different protection options for the worksheet you are going to protect.

4. Set Password

The most important object in this window is the "Password to unprotect sheet" textbox. This is where you enter the password that will be used to modify the cells in the worksheet. Notice, there is a check mark option that says "Protect worksheet and contents of locked cells", you should leave that checked. There is also a section labeled "Allow all users of this worksheet to:" There are many options in this section that you can check mark if you want someone that does NOT have the password to be able to do with this worksheet.

5. Test Protection

Once the worksheet is protected, try to make changes to it by clicking on a cell and entering any character on the keyboard. Also, test to make sure you are not able to make modifications that you shouldn't be able to according to the "Allow all users of this worksheet to:" section from step 4.

6. Unprotect

Tools->Protection->Unprotect Sheets

To unprotect the worksheet, go through the same menu and click "Unprotect Sheets". You will be asked for the password to unprotect the worksheet. Enter the password and make sure you can now make modifications to the unprotected Microsoft Excel worksheet.