Spreadsheet Protection

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Spreadsheet protection

Now that you have entered your student marks. Let's say that you are storing this spreadsheet on a computer in your classroom. You need to be able to protect your spreadsheet so that students will never be able to change their marks when you are not looking. Protecting a spreadsheet may also prevent you from inadvertently changing marks by accidentally hitting the keyboard.

Control access to workbooks and worksheets

Microsoft Excel provides several ways to restrict how users can view or change data in workbooks and worksheets. For your assignment, you will limit who can open and use the data in your workbook by requiring a password to open or save the workbook. To do this,

Go to the "File" menu
Select "Save As"
Use the following steps, which are provided for both Excel 97 and 2000 versions. Excel XP users should not see many changes from 2000.

For Excel 97

Click on the options button that appears below the Save and Cancel buttons (shown below):

For Excel 2000

Click on the "Tools" drop-down menu
Select "General Options" as shown below

In both Excel 97 or 2000, you will get the following "Save Options" screen:

Enter a password to "open" the spreadsheet and a password to "modify" the spreadsheet. You can also choose to recommend read-only access. For your assignment, protect your file and make your password simply the text: password.

Protection options are also available by going to "Protection" under the "Tools" menu. To find out more about the various protection options, go to your Help menu and enter "protection" to search the Index.

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