How to protect your workbook and prevent unauthorized access with a password?

In one of my previous post, I had shared with you all regarding protection of your workbook structure from un-authorized users. I have provided two different options to do this.

Today in this post, I will share with you on protecting your entire workbook from un-authorized access from any user with whom you don't want to share your spreadsheet data.

In MS Excel, there are two different ways of protecting your entire workbook. A) You can visit the "Protect Workbook" option and encrypt your spreadsheet with a password. B) Or you can visit the "Save As" option and protect your sheet.

A) Click the File tab and then click the "Protect Workbook" option as shown below. Put your password and click Ok. This will ask you to re-enter your password and that's it. Your file is protected with your given password. Keep it in mind that if you forget this password then it is somewhat impossible to retrieve it.

B) From this "Save As" option you cannot only protect the entire sheet but you can provide two different levels of protection in it. a) You can give a password to open the file b) You can give a separate file to modify the data.

This option helps you in the following case: You want to share the data with someone, but simultaneously you don't want the same user to modify the data. By the help of this level of protection you can restrict the user to only view the spreadsheet content.

For more information on how to do this, please get in touch with me at Samrat.biswaas@gmail.com

Samrat Biswas, MOS Excel Expert 2013, ITIL V3 Foundation
Advanced MS Office (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, One Note, Outlook), and MS Visio
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Do you want to make your spreadsheet read-only for others? Let's know how to mark the file as Final!

Very often you share your spreadsheet with others and you want that they can only see the content in "Read Only" mode. That means you do not want them to edit or reuse your file for some other purpose.

For this, you often protect the file and make it password protected/ read only. But in Excel there is another option of making your file "Read only" for others and also you can activate the option - that your content is FINAL and you don't want anyone to update the same.

To do this, you have to visit the File option and click the "Protect Workbook" dropdown as shown below. Post that you will get an option called "Mark as Final". This will let the users know that this is a final version and thus read only.

For more details on Encrypting your file, protecting particular cells, columns and formatting etc. Please get in touch with me at Samrat.biswaas@gmail.com.

Samrat Biswas

Advanced MS Office (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, One Note, Outlook), MS Visio, MS Project, and MS SharePoint.

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Reach me @ +91 8095039316