Forum Discussion
prevent user from deleting cells, rows
Tax Guy-gmail as I wrote above, the Protection tab is in the Format dialog, not in the ribbon.
I don't understand 'formatting the text'. I'm trying to prevent the user from deleting a cell but yet allow user to enter data in the cell.
Hello,
there are several ways to open the Format dialog.
- Right-click the cell and select "Format Cells"
- Click the icon in the lower right-hand corner of the following groups on the home ribbon: Font, Alignment, Number
- use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-1
The format dialog looks like this with the Protection tab selected. The other tabs can be used to format other aspects of the cell.
I guess I'm not explaining myself well. Let's start over.
I want to prevent users from deleting cells, rows, columns.
None of the options do what I want unless I can't follow instructions!!
Format-protection-locked prevents user from entering data. What am I missing?
I appreciate your patience!!
If you want to prevent users from deleting rows and/or columns or making other unwanted changes, you need to protect the sheet.
By default, all cells are formatted with the "Locked" option ticked. So, before protecting the sheet, you need to format the cells that the user is allowed to edit and untick the "Locked" option in the format dialog.
Next, click Review > Protect sheet.
Now users can only edit cells that are not "Locked" and they cannot delete whole row and/or columns.
Does that make it clearer?