Why do I need to protect or unprotect certain cells?

At times, you may wish to enter information into a worksheet for students to use. However, since you want them to all use the same information, you will not want students to be able to change or modify the information in anyway. By “locking” or “protecting” cells, students will be unable to change any of the text you type into the specified cells.

At the same time, you can leave other cells “unlocked”, which will allow students to add their own data into these cells. They will then be able to use the locked data in addition to their “new” information to make calculations, etc.

Sooooo…

To protect your cells:

You should protect cells once your entire document is complete. Therefore, after you have finished all your typing, then follow these steps.

The computer is set up to lock cells as a default. This means that the cells already come “locked”.

On the flip side, any cell you want the students to actually add data into or be able to modify, you must tell the computer to “unlock”.

To “unlock” cells,

  1. Highlight the cells you wish to “unlock”.
  2. Right click with the mouse and choose FORMAT / CELLS.

  1. Under PROTECTION, click on the box next to “locked”. **The check mark that was in the box should now disappear. This means that the cells will NOT be in “locked” mode.

  1. Click OK to go back to your worksheet.

**If there are any other cells you want to make “unlocked” do them at this time using the same steps.

**At this point, you have JUST separated your data into cells that are locked (default mode) and cells that are “unlocked”. However, to tell the computer you want them to actually be locked or unlocked, you must turn on the “protection mode”.

Now you must follow these steps to turn on the “protection mode”:

  1. Under the TOOLS pull-down menu, select PROTECTION, and then PROTECT SHEET.

  1. Click OK to end.

**At this time, you have protected your entire worksheet. At this time, anyone who opens your worksheet (including you), will only be able to modify the cells you specified to be “unlocked”. If you decide to make changes, you must go to the TOOLS pull-down menu, select PROTECTION, and then UNPROTECT SHEET. This will tell the computer not to turn off the protection mode allowing you to make changes.

**When you finish with your updates, and have redefined the cells to be either locked or unlocked, you must turn the “Protection Mode” back on.