How to protect cells in a sheet
Protect cells in Grid by Zaweba by choosing which ones stay locked on the Protection tab of Format Cells, then protecting the sheet so they refuse edits.
Two steps. In Grid by Zaweba, every cell has a Locked setting on the Protection tab of Format Cells, and that setting only takes effect when the sheet is protected. Decide which cells may be edited, clear their Locked setting, then protect the sheet. Locked cells then refuse edits while the others stay open for typing.
Why it's done in this order
New cells start out locked, but a sheet starts out unprotected, so the setting does nothing until you protect the sheet. That's convenient: you only need to change the cells people should be allowed to edit, which are usually far fewer than the ones you want to keep safe.
Locking only what matters
Select the input cells: the places where people should type, such as quantities on an order form or marks in a markbook. Open Format Cells with Ctrl+1, go to the Protection tab and clear Locked.
Then protect the sheet. From now on, anyone trying to type over a formula, a heading or a label gets a refusal, while the input cells accept entries as normal.
To make changes yourself later, take the protection off, edit, and protect again.
Making the sheet easy to use
Colour the input cells. A pale fill on the editable cells tells people at a glance where to type, and a cell style for inputs keeps it consistent. Grid's Format Cells has Fill and Border tabs for this, and cell styles live on the Home tab.
Add data validation to the input cells. Protection stops changes to the wrong cells; validation stops wrong values in the right ones. A drop-down for status, a number range for quantities and a date rule for deadlines, each with a Stop alert, make a form that's hard to break.
Hide what doesn't need seeing. Helper columns and lookup sheets can be hidden, rows and columns hidden, and sheets hidden, so the person using the form sees only what they need.
What protection covers, and what it doesn't
Sheet protection guards the cells of one sheet. Protect each sheet that needs it. Workbook-level protection isn't built in Grid, so protection won't stop someone adding, deleting or renaming whole sheets.
It's a guard against accidents, not a lock against a determined person. It's perfect for stopping a colleague overwriting a formula by mistake, and it's no substitute for keeping confidential figures out of a file you share.
Other Grid features respect it. The optional AI actions, if you connect your own account, never overwrite a locked cell on a protected sheet when writing results back.
Sharing protected files
Protection is saved with the workbook. Grid writes it into .xlsx and .zagr files and reads it from .xlsx files you open, so a protected template arrives protected. That makes a protected sheet a good way to send out forms: a booking sheet, a budget template, a timesheet, where people fill in their part and the sums stay intact.
A quick check before you send it
Try to break your own sheet. Click on a formula and type over it; it should refuse. Tab through the input cells and fill them in; they should accept good values and reject bad ones. Five minutes of testing in Grid by Zaweba saves a lot of puzzled emails later.
