Chapter 9: Protect Workbooks, Worksheets, and Ranges

Excel provides several methods at different levels that you can use to protect your workbooks and worksheets from unauthorised access, changes to the data, moving/deleting worksheets, or renaming worksheets in your workbook.

In this chapter, we will cover how to:

• Password protect your Excel file.
• Set different access levels for your workbook with passwords.
• Protect your workbook structure from unauthorised changes.
• Protect individual worksheets within a workbook.
• Protect specific ranges within a worksheet.

Important! Before you protect your workbook with a password, ensure that you’ve got the password written down and stored in a safe place where it can be retrieved if necessary. Microsoft does not provide any tools to access a password-protected Excel file where the password has been lost. Without an advanced password cracking tool, it is impossible to gain access to an Excel file that has been password-protected, if the password has been forgotten.