Quickly Lock a Sheet (Worksheet) in Excel

In Excel, there is an option to lock the sheet. As you know, we have four different types of sheets in Excel to use, and you can lock all these sheets. This tutorial teaches us to use the “Protect Sheet” option.

Lock “Protect” a Worksheet

1. First, right-click on the worksheet tab, and click on “Protect Sheet”.
   
2. In the “Protect Sheet” dialog box, select the options you want to allow the user to edit.
   
3. And enter the password which you want to apply and click OK.
   
4. Next, again enter the same password to confirm, and click OK to apply the lock.
   

When you click OK, it locks the sheet using the specified password (123456). When a user tries to edit a cell, it will show a message saying, “The cell or chart you’re trying to change is on a protected sheet. To make a change, unprotect a sheet. You might be requested to enter a password.”.

To unprotect, you need to use the same steps and enter the password which you have specified (123456). The protection of the sheet remains intact even if you move or copy the sheet to a new or an existing workbook.

Note: You can skip specifying the password but lock the sheet. In this case, the user doesn’t need the password to unlock the sheet. But the sheet will have all the protection which you have specified.

Lock a Chart Sheet, Macro Sheet, or Dialog Sheet

As I said, you can lock all the sheet types, and each sheet has a set of elements that you can protect with the lock.

Chart Sheet

Macro Sheet

Dialog Sheet

As you can see in the above examples, specifying the password is optional in the sheets.