in this Excel tutorial we're gonna look
at a couple of different ways that you
can password protect your Excel files as
you see here I have an Excel spreadsheet
with some very sensitive employee
information fortunately these are
fictional people but you can see there's
a list of names their hire dates their
employee numbers and whether they've
done certain things and so I want to
make sure that this stays confidential
there's a couple of things we can do to
protect this information first of all
and then there's a way to password
protect it so that people who shouldn't
see this won't be able to the first
method for protecting a spreadsheet is
to just go here to the review tab on the
review ribbon in the protect group you
can see that there is an option to
protect the sheet or the whole workbook
so let's look at how protect sheet works
here on this spreadsheet sheet number
one I'm just gonna click protect sheet
and you'll notice that there's all sorts
of options here and one of the options
we have is to add a password that is
required if someone wants to unprotect
the sheet for now I'll just leave that
blank I'll click okay so now watch what
happens if someone looks at this
spreadsheet and wants to change
something they click they type but Excel
won't let them type over that existing
data so this doesn't prevent people from
seeing the data but it protects the data
so it doesn't get accidentally or
purposefully changed inappropriately the
problem with this is look someone that
knows how to use Excel pretty well can
just go up here to review unprotect
sheet and now they can change that
number so that's why it may be a good
idea to click protect sheet and password
protect it so I'll just put in a
password click OK I have to confirm that
password and notice this warning here if
you lose or forget the password it can't
be recovered so this is pretty important
that you remember the passwords that you
use now this is completely protected
from changes people can still see the
data but they can't change it if they
try to unprotect it asks for the
password and as long as I can remember
the password I may
to unprotect the sheet so that's one
option for password protecting an excel
file but it doesn't fully protect it
from view right people can still see the
data let's look at a couple of the
options we have for fully protecting
this spreadsheet and workbook so that no
one can even see it so in many cases a
better way to protect your spreadsheet
to more fully protect the information is
to go to file and then click on info and
that takes you to the info page and look
protect workbook now I just click on
that button and go down to encrypt with
password so this is a great option here
put in that same password I get the same
warning about not forgetting click OK
reenter it just to make sure I didn't
accidentally type it wrong and now a
password is required to open this
workbook I'm going to now close out of
this spreadsheet this workbook
completely but before I do I need to
make sure I save my changes including
that password so I click Save this
should now be a completely protected
spreadsheet I'm gonna drag that file
onto the desktop give me a minute to do
so and then I'll resume the video so
there is the file that I've
password-protected I'm gonna double
click on it to open it up let's see if
it'll let me access it know it blocks it
it's encrypted it's protected and unless
the user knows the password they're not
going to be able to get in I just
entered a guess it wasn't right so I
have no access to that file let's try it
again this time I'll put in the correct
password tap enter and I'm in I can use
it fully now thanks for watching I hope
you found this tutorial to be helpful if
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