Have you encountered a scenario where you do not want to lock the whole sheet, but just a couple of cells in your Excel worksheet?
Locking an entire sheet is straightforward, but locking separate cells is a different story.
Let us say, we have this single cell that we want to lock in our Excel worksheet:
Here is the game plan:
- All of the cells are locked by default, however locked cells have no effect until you have protected the worksheet
- So we will unlock all of the cells
- Then select the single target cell and lock it
- After that, we will protect the worksheet and our target cell will now be locked!
I explain how How to Lock Cells in Excel below:
STEP 1: Select all of the cells by clicking the upper left corner:
STEP 2: Right click any cell and select Format Cells:
STEP 3: Ensure Locked is unticked.  This will unlock our entire sheet.  Click OK.
STEP 4: Right click on our target cell and select Format Cells:
STEP 5: Ensure Locked is ticked this time. This will lock our target cell. Click OK.
STEP 6:Â Now it is time to protect our Excel sheet and see the locking in action!
Right-click on the Worksheet Name and select Protect Sheet (or go to the ribbon menu and select Review > Protect Sheet)
STEP 7: Type in a password and Click OK.  In our example, I typed in excel as the password.
STEP 8: Retype the password and Click OK. Â
STEP 9: If you try editing your target cell now, Excel will not allow you to…And you are able to edit the other cells just fine!
How to Lock Cells in Excel
