PROVIDING ACCURATE, RELIABLE AND STRAIGHT TO THE POINT KNOWLEDGE ABOUT DIFFERENT IT TOOLS EXPLAINED WITH PRACTICAL EXAMPLES
GOOGLE SHEETS has many great features. One of these great features is its Sharing Capabilities which gives us a very smooth experience when we share our sheets with somebody and when we decide the permissions to edit, or just view as per our discretion.
LOCKING OR PROTECTING CELLS OR SHEETS IN GOOGLE SHEETS MEAN TO LIMIT THE ACCESS TO EDIT THE DATA IN PARTICULAR CELLS OR SHEETS. WE CAN ALSO LIMIT THE EDITING TO FEW SPECIFIC PEOPLE.
In this article we will learn the way to lock or protect a particular group of cells, permit a few people to edit the cell, show the warning while editing and more options available in google sheets.
Let us first learn to lock the cells in google sheets.
Its always a great habit to learn with practical. So, let us take an example and learn the process of locking the cells from editing.
Let us assume a fictitious data in our sheet.
We have created a SIMPLE INTEREST CALCULATOR.
We don’t want the user to edit the result cell which contains the formula. So we’ll try to lock this cell to avoid any change in the cell by mistake.
INTEREST CALCULATOR | ||
PRINCIPAL | INTEREST RATE | DURATION |
INTEREST FOR THE PERIOD | 0 |
Let us put the values in the calculator and check the result.
INTEREST CALCULATOR | ||
PRINCIPAL | INTEREST RATE | DURATION |
1000 | 10 | 1 |
INTEREST FOR THE PERIOD | 100 |
The cell containing the simple interest is locked for everybody else.
THE PROTECTION SYSTEM IN GOOGLE SHEETS IS A BIT DIFFERENT FROM THE MICROSOFT EXCEL. MICROSOFT EXCEL GIVES US OPTION TO APPLY PASSWORDS BUT GOOGLE SHEETS WORKS ON THE BASIS OF THE GOOGLE ACCOUNT LOGIN AND CONTROLLING THE ACCESS OF DIFFERENT USERS.
We shared this sheet with another user and tried changing the locked cell.
The Google Sheets returned an error.
Look at the picture below.
In the previous section, we learnt to lock a single cell or group of cells .
Now, let us learn to lock a complete SHEET from being edited by anybody.
The SHEET IS LOCKED FROM EDITING.
Let us check the sheet.
The sheet can’t be edited at all. All the contents can just be viewed only.
Till now , we learnt the ways to lock a few cells or complete sheet in google sheets.
Let us now check how we can authorize a few selected users to be able to edit the data.
Let us lock the complete INTEREST CALCULATOR and then share its editing authorizations with other selected users.
[ Already, complete description has been given for locking the cells , so we’ll discuss it in brief only ].
After clicking DONE, we are done with the limited access to our cells or sheets where the users who are granted access will be able to make the changes to the cells or sheets.
Out of the many useful options, the last option is to show a warning message when you try to edit the cells but allowing the editing.
Let us learn to lock cells such that they just show a warning message when somebody tries to change the cells.
In the previous sections we learnt about many ways to protect the cells or sheets.
Now, at the end, let us learn to unprotect or unlock the locked cells or a sheet in google sheets.
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