Protect only certain Cells, Columns or Rows in Excel

In the last post we saw how to Protect and Unprotect Excel sheets with password in general and in this post for advanced users who want just to protect only certain cells, columns, rows in an Excel sheet. This makes only certain sensitive cells as read-only while allowing the user to edit other cells or information.

So how to protect only certain cells in Excel 2007?

This tip is written for Excel 2007 but the idea maybe applied to earlier version like Excel 2003.
When you protect a sheet all the contents are protected because by default all the cells are set to be locked.
So Press the Keyboard Shortcut Ctrl + A to select all the cells of the sheet. Right click and choose Format cells. Go to the Protection tab and uncheck Locked option and click Ok.

Now select only the cells or columns, rows that you want to protect. Right click and choose Format cells again. Go to the protection tab and check Locked option and click Ok.

Go to Review tab, click Protect Sheet and protect the sheet using a password. See the previous post (How to Protect and Unprotect Excel Sheets) for more details.

Now only certain cells of the sheet will be protected.
To unprotect, just go to the review tab, and click Unprotect sheet and enter the password.

Additional Tips: If you want users to be able to change the colors or fonts, choose format cells, columns and rows option while you protect the sheet.