Excel ? - can you lock certain cells and not others?

[cmpgeek]

is there anyway to lock certain cells so they can not be changed without having to protect the whole document?

i have a on call worksheet that was made up for others i work with where they choose a name out of a dropdown list... when they do that the home phone# shows up in the next cell to the right of the name, and (if they have one) their personal cell or pager number appears in the cell to the right of that one...

the problem is that when someone does not have a personal pager of their own, the secretary assigns them a pager and then types that pager's number into the thrid cell (thereby overwriting the formula that is set up to pull in the person's personal information). i have sent out a reminder to not do this, and shown them the place to type in assigned numbers, but i would still like to lock the cells with the formulas in them just to be safe... i just am not sure if there is a way to do that, that will not lock the entire file. the secretaries still need to be able to make changes; i just dont want them touching the cells where the "look up " formulas are.

i dont know if it matters or not, but all of the cells i am concerned with are in one of two columns that are side by side...

i dont think there is any other information that would be helpful, but if there is, i apologize for not including it from the beginning...

thanks...


... always in a state of ... inspiring to some day experience ...

 

[munkee35]

Select the cells u want to leave unprotected, Right-click > Format cells > uncheck the 'Locked' option.

Now protect the sheet, by choosing Tools > Protection > Protect Sheet - select the desired options for protecting, and finally use a password so that the protection cant be removed by anyone.

 

[MoiraT]

This answer applies to Excel 2002, but is probably similar in earlier versions.
As you probably know, all cells are locked by default but the locking is only active if the worksheet is protected. So the way I suggest is to select the cells that you want the user to be able to type into and do Format Cells, Protection and untick Locked. Then select the cells you don't want the user to be able to type into and put the tick back for those only. Then from the Tools menu select Protection, Protect Worksheet and make sure there is only a tick against Select Unlocked Cells. Now your users can only type into the unlocked cells.
Hope that helps

 

[cmpgeek]

i had to check, but we are on office 2000...

i have gone through and unlocked several of the dropdown boxes, and then protected the workbook as you both suggested... when i went to another person's PC though, not only could i change the choices in the dropdown lists; i could type in any cell i wanted...

not sure what i am doing wrong...
i dont want to waste anyone's time on this if there are more important questions out there... i have sent the reminder and such - hopefully that will be enough...

thanks for trying...

... always in a state of ... inspiring to some day experience ...

 

[Stroppy]

Are you sure you selected "Protect worksheet" rather than "Protect Workbook"?

It does work!

Also, if it is shared on the network, would you be wanting to "Share" or "Protect and Share" it as well?

 

[cmpgeek]

actually i know i selected protect workbook... i thought that would protect each worksheet... i will have to try that...

i dont know if it is the same as sharing it on a netowrk, but the file itself is on a public drive so that several people can access it... will that make a difference as far as what you are saying with "share" vs "share and protect"?

one last question... the dropdown boxes were created in VB - is there anything that has to be done differently in order to make sure they can use those as they do not technically "belong" to a cell?

thanks for all your suggestions...

... always in a state of ... inspiring to some day experience ...