How to unlock excel cells
How to Lock and Unlock cells in Excel
here I'm going to show you another way
that you can protect your worksheet
where you don't have to worry about
entering passwords now what I mean is
for instance say that we want the
benefits column to always be editable
but we don't want anything else in a
worksheet to be able to be edited and we
don't want to have to enter a password
to edit the benefits part now a very
simple way to do this is to I'll show
you by example first right click one
cell and click format cells now if you
go to the protection tab you'll notice
this locked and there is a box next to
it that's always checked now by default
it's checked so all of them are checked
if you uncheck this once click OK then
go to tools protection protect sheet and
here have select unlocked cells checked
but do not allow locked cells to be
selected so uncheck that select ok what
you'll notice is that you cannot select
any cells in the worksheet except for
those that are unlocked and here you
only have one so
you can delete it reenter it now what
I'm going to do here is unprotect the
sheet and I'm going to select this
entire range then right click format
cells and uncheck the locked box now
this entire column is unprotected or is
unlocked it's not locked so I'm going
hit tools protection protect sheet and
now if I hit OK it's going to allow me
to edit any one of these cells so one
good thing to note is that even though
you can't even click on any of these
cells they're still going to be updated
when you enter data into this cell and
that's because all the cells under total
compensation or formulas so also if you
wanted to make it so that you can select
these cells but you can't edit them go
up to tools protection unprotect sheet
then re protect the sheet so just go
tools protection protect sheet and in
this box check the box next to select
locked cells click OK now what that's
going to allow you to do is to select
any cell however you cannot put any data
in these cells but here you can delete
them
and add whatever you want now the reason
is because these cells are unlocked so
that's how if they are making a form or
anything like that that you need to send
out to a large amount of people and you
want them to fill in their own
information what you can do is have a
form made out and have all of the cells
locked except for the cells where you
want people to enter their own data so
you unlock those specific cells then
protect the worksheet and they're going
to be able to enter say like their own
benefits whatever that is and send it
back to you but they're not going to be
able to change anything else in any of
the other columns or rows so that's the
benefit of doing this in addition you
can add a password to it if you want
just unprotect the sheet and then re
protect it by adding a password up here
and also note that in this box under
here if you select any of these say
format cells format columns insert row
insert column what that will allow you
to do is it will allow anyone without
this password to format a cell or a
column or to insert a row or a column
there's a large list here and if you
check any of them it allows you to do
that while the worksheet is protected I
go into more depth on that subject in
another tutorial but the point of this
one is just to show you that if you
unlock a cell you can edit it while all
of the other cells are uneditable in a
protected worksheet
