protecting certain cells

[The Data Rat]

Newbie to this group...

We keep all of our company info on a complicated but nicely formatted little
excell spread sheet with lots of macro's. Is there anyway to
prevent/protect the formatted cells from someone deleting/typing in them?

In other words, if cell C3 is the sum of cell C1 and C2, how can I prevent
anyone from changing C3, but allow them to enter info in cells C1 and C2?
Needless to say, losing the formatting defeats the whole purpose and I have
spent hours going through the spread sheet trying to find where the
formatting was deleted/changed.

I am using 2000 on one computer and 98 on another.

Thanks!

 

[Bradley Dawson]

1. Select the cells that you want the user to be able to edit.
2. Format Cells (pull down, right click, or ctrl-1)
3. Select the Protection Tab (upper right)
4. Uncheck the Locked checkbox.
5. If you want to also hide the formula in the result cell, do the above
except leave Locked checked and check the Hidden checkbox.
6. From the Tools>Protection>Protect Worksheet menu enter a really hard
password.
7. Write down the password.

The user can change the unlocked cells but cannot alter the calculation cell
or even see what clever formula is in it.