skysuite

Cell Locking

A pair of Lock/Unlock buttons that flip the Locked flag on the active selection and keep the worksheet protected, so only the cells you choose to leave unlocked stay editable.

When to use it

  • Locking everything except the input cells of a financial model before handing it to a colleague
  • Protecting a delivered template's structure while keeping data-entry cells open
  • Selectively unlocking a single cell or range on a sheet that's already protected, without having to unprotect/reprotect manually
  • Switching a worksheet from "all locked by default" to "all unlocked by default" without touching every cell individually

How it works

  1. 1
    Open Lock Cells from the More Tools dropdown - it's a split button with Lock Cells and Unlock Cells.
  2. 2
    Select the cells you want to change.
  3. 3
    Click Lock Cells to set those cells' Locked property to true, or Unlock Cells to set it to false.
  4. 4
    SkySuite unprotects the sheet (prompting for the password the first time if one is set), changes the lock flag on your selection, and re-protects with the same options as before.
  5. 5
    The first time you lock a single cell on an otherwise-unlocked-by-default sheet, SkySuite first sets the entire sheet's cells to unlocked so only your selection ends up locked.

Tips & shortcuts

  • The sheet remains protected after the operation, with the same DrawingObjects/AllowFormatting/AllowSorting/AllowFiltering/AllowPivot options it had before.
  • Passwords entered during an unprotect prompt are cached in memory for the lifetime of the Excel session - you won't be re-prompted on subsequent Lock/Unlock calls for the same sheet.
  • Password caching is per-process and not persisted, so closing Excel clears the cache. SkySuite never stores the password to disk.
  • The first lock on a sheet that doesn't have SkySuite's "default cell lock removed" marker flips the whole sheet's default to unlocked - this preserves your intent of "only this cell should be locked."