In Excel there are various ways to either protect sheets or cells from access, make a them read-only or totally encrypt the workbook with a strong password. It’s important to understand the difference in Excel between Protect and the stronger Encrypt feature.
Excel’s password protection is more complicated than in Word or PowerPoint because there are options to lock the whole workbook, just parts of a workbook or limit to read only access.
Encrypt vs Protect
There’s an important difference between Excel Encryption and Protection. They are often confused.
Encryption – stops the whole spreadsheet from being read without the right password. The whole file is strongly encrypted.
Protection – stops parts of a spreadsheet from being changed or edited. Can be done at the sheet or down to the individual cell level. Protection works in conjunction with the Lock option.
Check out How to protect Excel sheets from unwanted changes which continues in Part 2.
Encrypt whole workbook
Just like Word and PowerPoint, the whole Excel workbook can be encrypted with a password. Go to File | Info | Protect Workbook | Encrypt with Password.
This uses very strong encryption to password lock the entire file.
Excel for Mac has the choices at File | Passwords to have a password to open (full encryption) or a password to modify the contents.
Protect in Excel
Also on that File | Info menu are two Protect options. Protect in Excel is NOT encryption, instead it’s a way to stop unwanted changes to selected parts of a workbook or sheet.
Those Protect options are on the Review tab.
You can enable it by launching your Excel file and navigate to Review tab. Select Protect Workbook and choose Protect Structure and Windows.
Type in an optional password, confirm it, and then save the file.
More Protect options
Buried in the Excel Save As options are more choices to limit access to a workbook.
Read-only recommended – just a suggestion not to tamper with a workbook.
Password to Modify – ‘Read only’ is enforced with a password.
Password to Open – which is NOT full encryption
Excel for Windows
Go to the full save dialog box and choose Tools | General Options | Read only recommended or add a password to “Password to modify”.
Excel for Mac
Go to File | Save a copy | Options to find “Read only (recommended)” or “Password to modify”.
Read only recommended
Excel workbooks can be saved with a “Read Only recommended” option. This choice doesn’t stop someone changing the workbook, only as a suggestion in a status bar when opened.
“READ-ONLY To prevent accidental changes, the author has set this file to open as read-only. Edit Anyway “
Read only enforced
A whole workbook can be made read-only, with write/modify access needing a password.
Password to open is not encryption
The “Password to open” option requires a password to open. The contents are somewhat encrypted but it’s NOT the complete strong encryption available with the “Encrypt with password” option.
Nerd note: look inside a “Password to open” XLXS file shows some exposed XML, compared to a fully encrypted workbook that’s just unreadable characters.
How to protect Excel sheets from unwanted changes – Part 1
