With Google consistently improving its office suite over the years, Google Sheets has turned into a worthy alternative to the industry standard Microsoft Excel that is available for everyone for free. One big advantage of Sheets is its collaborative feature, which allows you to share a spreadsheet with anyone with a Google account.
This also means that those with access to a file can unintentionally mess up any figures in the spreadsheet. Thankfully, you can prevent that by locking the important cells in a sheet you don’t want others to edit. Here is everything you need to know about locking cells in Google Sheets.
How to lock cells in Google Sheets
There are a couple of ways to lock cells in Google Sheets, but here we’ll discuss the most straightforward process.
How to lock a single cell
- Right-click the cell you want to lock and go to View more cell actions (it’s the last option in the context menu). Then, click Protect range.
- In the new pane that appears on the right side of the window, select Add a sheet or range.
- Under Range, you’ll see the name of the selected cell. You can manually edit the field if you want. Adding a description is optional, but give it a title if you plan on having multiple cell locks for different user groups.
- When done, click Set permissions.
- On the pop-up screen, choose who can edit the selected cell. You can bar everyone except yourself or use Custom under Restrict who can edit this range to only allow a selected few editors.
- When you’re happy with your selection, select Done.
And that’s how you can lock a particular cell in Google Sheets.
How to loock multiple cells
It’s even possible to lock multiple cells in one go. All you do is select all the cells you want to restrict instead of a single cell and then right-click on the selection, as you did in step 1 above. All the steps after that remain exactly the same.
The only difference you’ll notice is in the right pane, where instead of a single cell name, you’ll see a cell range, like C5:D8. You can manually enter the cell count here or use the range picker icon on the side to make the selection right on the sheet with the cursor. Again, all the following steps remain unchanged.
If you’re wondering, others on that sheet will be able to see and copy the locked data. But as they try to edit the locked cells, a pop-up message appears saying they don’t have permission to alter the data in there.
Changes made to permissions may not come into effect on the other end in real time. If another user has the sheet open, they may be able to edit the cells even after you have denied them permission. A page refresh on their end may be required.
How to warn other contributors about accidental edits
There could be times when you only want other contributors to see a warning so that they’re sure of the edits they’re about to make. Google Sheets lets you do that from the same settings page. All you need to do is pick Show a warning when editing this range in step 4, and click Done. All other steps stay the same.
This way, other contributors can save any edits to the locked cells but only after dismissing a warning message.
How to lock entire rows or columns in Google Sheets
To do that, right-click on the column or row head that you want to lock. In the context menu, go to View more cell actions and select Product range.
The same window on the right appears, but this time, the cell address is replaced by the column or row title you’ve selected. For instance, the range name will have F:F for the F column to depict the entire column.
Click Set permissions, choose who you want to allow to make the edits, and select Done. The process is exactly like what you did in steps 3 through 5 above.
How to lock an entire sheet in Google Sheets
Don’t want someone to make any edits to a collaborative sheet? Google Sheets has an option for that too! Just follow the quick steps below:
- All the sheets in a file appear in the lower-left corner of the screen. Right-click on the sheet name that you want to lock and select Protect sheet.
- On the right pane, the Sheet tab is in focus. The correct sheet name appears under it, but if it doesn’t, choose the right one from the drop-down menu.
- Select Set permission.
- Choose the users who can edit the sheet from the pop-up menu. Then click Done.
How to delete a protected range in Google Sheets
It might be hard to keep track if you’ve set multiple locked ranges for your team members. However, you can see all the protected ranges in Google Sheets in one place and even delete them from there. This is how you can get there:
- In the top menu, click Data and select Protect sheet and ranges.
- The window on the right lists all the protected ranges you’ve set. Select the one you want to delete.
- Click the bin icon next to the description box to delete the range.
- Confirm by clicking Remove.
Keeping your data safe in Google Sheets
Anyone messing with the painstakingly compiled data in a spreadsheet, accidentally or otherwise, could lead to unnecessary hassle. You can avoid the trouble and keep your Google Sheets intact by locking specific cells or entire sheets and allowing only authorized people to make the changes. It’s a powerful tool that will come in handy if you often work with spreadsheets shared with large teams.
Google Sheets makes it easy to lock cells with just a couple of clicks to set the restriction, as the steps above show. And there are several customizations available, too, for when you want granular control over the editing restrictions. But if you’re looking to get more out of Google Sheets, you can significantly enhance its capability with the help of several useful add-ons available for Google’s office suite.
