excel sheet protect using password ?

[Prakash Nimbalkar]

I want to collect the responses online from multiple people in the excel file,  but I want to protect individual excel sheet with a password, is it possible? I want to have responses in excel sheets/tabs, so responders cant see other's responses. So I want to protect an individual sheet, is it possible? 

[#2]

I'm not certain this is possible. What I am certain of is this is not a good idea. Whilst Excel password protection has improved over the years, I don't consider it secure enough for handling anything sensitive.

If there's any way you can redesign your process so that the same file / workbook is not being passed between people who should not have access to data from any other participants, you should go that route.

Otherwise, you will perhaps encounter someone like me who will generally poke and prod at something like a protected workbook to find out what is being hidden. Last time I looked, which was more than 2 years ago, there were either 'instant crack' tools to remove Excel workbook protections or GPU accelerated tools for password guessing.

I hope someone can contradict me and make some assurances regards Excel security in the latest version.

[#3]

Hi Prakash,

Do you have Office 365?  If so there's a "Forms" button on there that sounds perfect for your needs.  You can create a survey really easily and the data gets saved in a table in the Excel file.  The users can't see anyone else's results. 

[#4]

Thank you Hopkins, 

Yes, I know about forms but there was some conditional formatting in the excel- using different color codes. That is the reason I wanted to use excel. 

[#5]

Ah, OK then @Prakash Nimbalkar.

Unfortunately there is currently no way to do this in Excel Online.    

With Excel desktop you can write VBA  to protect and hide sheets based on passwords but

a) Only 1 user can enter data at a time

b) as @Stefan Holmes mentions it's nearly impossible to make worksheets 100% secure

Sending out independent templates and then using Power Query to consolidate them is my current process.

[#6]

---

@Wyn Hopkins wrote:

Hi Prakash,

Do you have Office 365?  If so there's a "Forms" button on there that sounds perfect for your needs.  You can create a survey really easily and the data gets saved in a table in the Excel file.  The users can't see anyone else's results. 

---

Thank you Hopkins, 

Yes, I know about forms but there was some conditional formatting in the excel- using different color codes. That is the reason I wanted to use excel.