Excel spreadsheets are useful tools to process data, and you’ll often find yourself sharing them with others. But you might also build in complex formulas and other tools that you don’t want other users to change or edit. Fortunately, Excel offers a quick and easy way to secure your workbooks and prevent unwanted changes. Let’s learn how to use Protect Workbook in Microsoft Excel.
How to Use Protect Workbook in Excel
Excel workbooks are built for sharing. But when you share your workbooks, you want to ensure that they’ll be useful to your target audience. Part of this involves ensuring that unwanted edits and changes can’t be made. These can corrupt your data and make your spreadsheets less useful.
This is where Excel’s Protect Workbook feature comes in. When you use it, you can set permissions that control exactly which changes – if any – can be made to your workbook, and the data inside of it. It’s easy to use and helps you control your finished work.
To use Protect Workbook, begin by going to Excel’s Review tab. You’ll find this on the ribbon, the series of tabs and menus at the top of your screen. Click Review, and find the Protect Workbook button, just right of center.
Click Protect Workbook, and Excel will open the Protect Workbook menu. Here, you have the option to set a password that users must input to access your workbooks. Below, you can choose to Protect Structure and/or Protect Windows.
Protect Structure is on by default, and it keeps others from making edits to your workbook. Protect Windows preserves any default view settings that you may have. When you’re finished, click OK.
Excel will protect your full workbook. As you can see, this is a quick and easy way to eliminate the risk of unwanted changes and edits.
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