today let's have a look how we can

lock and unlock specific areas on an

excel sheet so we're going to take a
look at the basics but the case that
we're dealing with today has a twist.
this was a question from one of my
students Anya who asked I'd like to
leave yellow cells unprotected is there
a way without a VBA macro to get this
done this way I can move from one
unprotected yellow cell to the next one
with a tab key and it would save me a
lot of time entering data can we do this
without VBA
first off let's cover the basics for
protecting can done protecting your
worksheets you do that in the review tab
under protect here you can protect the
entire sheet by clicking on this you
probably would want to give this a
password and you have to confirm that
password everything is fully protected
so if you try to input anywhere in this
sheet you get this pop up that is
protected and the user can only
unprotect it if they know the password
now in addition to this you have the
ability to unprotect some of the cells
and leave the other ones protected you
can do it in different ways one method
is to use allow edit ranges then this
gives you some additional options so you
can set different passwords for
different ranges but in case we just
want a simple solution all we have to do
is to select the cells that we don't
want protected right mouse click go to
format cells or use the shortcut key
control 1 under protection here you need
to take away the checkmark beside locked
once you do this nothing happens until
you protect the worksheet at this point
nothing is protected
I can input Everywhere's I can input
here and I can input here this kicks in
the moment you protect the sheet so now
I'm going to go click on protect this
time I'm just not going to give it a
password and click on OK so when I
attempt to input something here it's
still protected
I can't input but I should be able to
input here and I can and of course you
can select different areas and take away
that
tick mark to have the different areas
unprotected once the sheet is protected
so let me unprotect this and just put
back that check mark for all the cells
so when you get this symbol in there it
means there is a mix some cells are
protected some cells aren't I'm just
going to put back to check mark to go
back to the original default state now
let's come to the complex case my aim is
to protect all the cells here except the
yellow cells these cells are going to be
my input cells and normally when you
have an Excel table and you're inputting
data so let's say I put 23 I press tab
that takes me to the next cell tab takes
me to the next cell when I protect these
gray cells and I leave the yellow ones
unprotected this means when I press tab
inside a yellow cell it's going to jump
to the next unprotected cell which is
going to be this yellow cell and then
this yellow cell what I want to do is to
unprotect all the yellow cells the
time-consuming way of doing this is to
manually select all these yellow cells
so hold down the control key select them
and then take away that checkmark but
this is going to cost me a lot of time
if I have to do this on a large area
like this one the faster way of doing
this is this we're gonna highlight the
range where we're going to be inputting
data and we're going to use the find
feature so let's press ctrl F under
options here we get the ability to add a
specific format select choose format
from cell and go to one of these yellow
cells now just keep in mind that when
you take the cell formatting in this way
it doesn't just take into account the
color but the entire formatting of the
cells are also the number formatting
that's behind this click on find all it
finds everything here and I want to
highlight it in my spreadsheet so I'm
gonna press ctrl a to highlight these
results which is gonna end up
highlighting them on the sheet right
here and let's just close our dialog box
now what I'm going to do is use the
shortcut key control 1 to go back to
format cell
go to protection take away the checkmark
beside locked click on ok now let's
protect the sheet this time I'm not
gonna give it a password and let's test
let's input a number here and press tab
jumps to the next yellow cell tab tab
this way I can input data so much easier
so this is my approach if you can think
of any other methods share it with me in
the comments below
this was our locking and unlocking
Thursday fun if you liked it give it a
thumbs up and if you haven't subscribed
to this channel and you want to improve
your Excel skills consider subscribing
[Music]
you