What types of workbook protection are available in MS-Excel?

Given below are the different options available for protecting your Excel data:

• File-level: This refers to the ability to lock down your Excel file by specifying a password so that users can’t open or modify it. You have two choices here:

  • File encryption: When you choose this option, you specify a password and lock the Excel file. This prevents other users from opening the file. For more information, see Protect an Excel file.

  • Setting a password to open or modify a file: You specify a password to open or modify a file. Use this option when you need to give Read-only or edit access to different users. For more information, see Protect an Excel file.

  • Mark as Final: Use this option if you want to mark your Excel file as the final version and want to prevent any further changes by other users. For more information, see Add or remove protection in your document, workbook, or presentation.

  • Restrict Access: If your organization has permissions set up using Information Rights Management (IRM), you can apply any of the available IRM permissions to your document. For more information, see Add or remove protection in your document, workbook, or presentation.

  • Digital signature: You can add digital signatures to your Excel file. For more information, see Add or remove a digital signature in Office files.

    NOTE: To add a digital signature, you need a valid certificate from a certificate authority (CA).

• Workbook-level: You can lock the structure of your workbook by specifying a password. Locking the workbook structure prevents other users from adding, moving, deleting, hiding, and renaming worksheets. For more information on protecting workbooks, see Protect a workbook.

• Worksheet-level: With sheet protection, you can control how a user can work within worksheets. You can specify what exactly a user can do within a sheet, thereby making sure that none of the important data in your worksheet are affected. For example, you might want a user to only add rows and columns, or only sort and use AutoFilter. Once sheet protection is enabled, you can protect other elements such as cells, ranges, formulas, and ActiveX or Form controls. For more information on protecting worksheets, see Protect a worksheet.

Excel provides three ways to protect a workbook:

• Require a password to open the workbook
• Prevent users from adding sheets, deleting sheets, hiding sheets, and unhiding sheets
• Prevent users from changing the size or position of windows