how to make an excel spreadsheet read only

Then (2) under Sheet, (3) choose a sheet to protect and (4) click Set permissions. (1) Enter a description of the protection.

The Protected sheets and ranges section appears on the right side.

In the Menu, go to Data > Protected sheets and ranges.

To protect a range or a whole sheet from changes, you have to set permissions. In Google Sheets, there is no read-only setting like there is in Excel. Set Permissions to Protect a Google Sheet If a user doesn’t have a password, they can open the file as read-only. Now when you open the file, you get a prompt to enter a password to modify the file.

In the General Options window, enter a password to modify, and click OK.

In the Save As window, click Tools > General Options.

In the Ribbon, go to the File tab, and choose Save As.

In this case, a user can enter a password to edit a file or open it in read-only mode. You can also password-protect an Excel file in order to make it read-only.

When you click Edit Anyway, the file can be edited. To enable read-only mode, in the Ribbon, go to File > Info.Īs a result, the user is asked to enable editing every time the file is opened.To edit the file, the user is asked on opening to allow editing. (If no one else has the file open, you'll just see the filename by itself without any parentheses.) Once you've found the file you're looking for, double-click it to open it and view its contents.This tutorial demonstrates how to save a file as read-only in Excel and Google Sheets.Īn Excel file can be saved as read-only to prevent users from changing the content. If the file is open by another user on your network, their name will appear next to the file name in parentheses. When the Browse dialog box appears, select the file you want to check from the list of files. In the Open Other Workbooks dialog box, select the drive, folder, and file type (. To do this, click the File tab, then click Open Other Workbooks. If you don't see the file you're looking for in the Recent list, or if you want to check who has a file open even if you don't have it open yourself, you can use the Open Other Workbooks feature. Next to each file name in the list, you'll see the name of the person who last opened that file. To do this, click the File tab, then click Recent. First, if you have the file open yourself, you can check the Recent list to see who else has opened it recently. If you're wondering who has a particular file open in Microsoft Excel, there are a few ways you can find out.

How to make an excel spreadsheet read only