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  • 5/1/2025
Discover how to lock cells that have formulas in Excel. Essentially, lock cells to protect them or how to lock formulas in excel using, or how to lock cells in Excel to protect your formulas & only allow input where needed.

When working with Excel, it's important to protect important data and formulas from accidental changes. To do this, you can lock cells that have formulas so that they cannot be edited. This can prevent errors or unwanted changes that could affect the accuracy of your calculations. To lock cells with formulas, you first need to select the cells you want to protect. Then, right-click on the selection and choose "Format Cells." In the Format Cells dialog box, select the "Protection" tab and check the box next to "Locked." Click "OK" to close the dialog box. Finally, go to the "Review" tab and click on "Protect Sheet." In the Protect Sheet dialog box, check the box next to "Protect worksheet and contents of locked cells" and enter a password if desired. Click "OK" to complete the process. By following these simple steps, you can easily lock cells with formulas and protect your important data in Excel.

A)Disable Locked And Hidden In All Cells
1) Ctrl + A
2) Ctrl + 1
3) Protection tab
4) Ensure uncheck on "Locked" and "Hidden"
5) OK

Hide And Protect Formulas In Current Sheet
1) Ctrl + G
2) Special...
3) Formulas
4) OK
5) Ctrl + 1
6) Protection tab
7) Ensure check on "Locked" and "Hide"
8) OK
9) Review -- Protect -- Protect Sheet
10) OK

Protect Cells
1) Review -- Protect -- Protect Sheet

Unprotect Cells
1) Review -- Protect -- Unprotect Sheet


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Transcript
00:00If you want to hide your formula like this formulas here hidden from users and
00:04at the same time prevent people from making changes to your spreadsheet like
00:07this, this is how you do it. Let's first and foremost of all remove lock and
00:11hidden feature from every cell. Press ctrl A and ctrl 1. Make sure you're on
00:16the protection tab and remove the check mark from lock and hidden and click OK.
00:21Now every cell has lock and hidden disabled. Now to enable only the
00:25formulas you press ctrl G and then click on special and click on formulas. Lift
00:31all this checkbox as it is and click OK. What this does is that it selects only
00:36the formulas on your spreadsheet. Now press ctrl 1. Make sure you're in protection
00:41tab again and reinstate lock and hidden and click OK. Now if you were to try to
00:47edit it you'll still be able to edit your formula because your protection hasn't
00:52been enabled yet. So to enable the protection go and review and then go
00:56protect sheet and click OK. Now I try to do the same thing again here you can see
01:01that you cannot make changes to any of your formula. However you can make
01:05changes to the rest of the cell like this. But if you want to only allow the
01:11user to view the formula at the same time lock like this, this is how I do it. Go
01:16ahead and unprotect your sheet now and let's select your formula cells only by
01:20pressing ctrl G special formula and click OK. Now press ctrl 1 and remove the
01:29hidden and click OK. Make sure in review again protect sheet and click OK. Now you
01:35can see that the user can see the formulas but if the user tried to edit the
01:40formula like this you'll get this error message here like that. But if you want
01:44the user to be able to edit the formula cell but hide the formula this is how I do it.
01:49Let's unprotect the sheet here and press ctrl G special formula and OK to select
01:55all the formula cells only. Next you're gonna press ctrl 1 and flip the checkbox
02:00like this. You're gonna hide the formula but you can allow the user to edit the
02:05cell. Let's click OK and if you go review protect sheet and click OK. Now you can
02:11see that the formulas are all hidden out of sight from the users but the user can
02:17start editing the cell.

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