How To Lock Columns In Google Sheets

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Google Sheets is a powerful data management tool that can help you organise your data efficiently. Sometimes, there is a need to lock particular columns to prevent accidental changes or edits. However, unlike Excel, Google Sheets does not have a direct option to lock or unlock columns. But don’t worry, we have the workaround, and in this blog post, we will walk you through how to lock columns in Google Sheets step-by-step.

Step 1: Open Your Google Sheets document

First, open the Google Sheets document where you want to lock the columns. Select the column by clicking on the letter at the top of the column. You can select multiple columns by holding down the “Shift” key on your keyboard and clicking additional column letters.

Step 2: Protecting the Selected Columns

Once you’ve selected your columns, right-click on one of them and select the “Protect range…” option from the drop-down menu.

Step 3: Setting Up the Range and Permissions

In the pop-up window, you will see a text box under “Range”. Make sure it matches your selected column or columns. Then, click on the “Set permissions” button.

By default, the permissions will be set to “Only you”, which means only you can edit this column. If there are other people you want to grant editing access to, click on the “Restrict who can edit this range” radio button and enter their email addresses in the box that appears.

Step 4: Saving the Changes

Click on the “Done” button to save your changes. Now, your columns are locked, and only authorized users can edit them.

And there you have it. By following these steps, you can easily lock columns in Google Sheets. While it’s not a directly available feature, Google’s range protection provides a useful way to achieve the same result.

Note: To unlock the columns, you just have to go to the “Data” tab, select “Protected sheets and ranges”, find the column you want to unlock, and click “remove”. Then, the columns are unlocked and editable again.

<strong>function unlockColumns() {
  var spreadsheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet();
  var protections = spreadsheet.getProtections(SpreadsheetApp.ProtectionType.RANGE);
  for (var i = 0; i &lt; protections.length; i++) {
    var protection = protections[i];
    if (protection.canEdit()) {
      protection.remove();
    }
  }
}</strong>

By using this script, you can unlock all the locked columns at once. To do this, click “Extensions” -> “Apps Script”, paste the code, and click “Run”.

Conclusion

Protecting your data is crucial when collaborating on Google Sheets. By locking columns, you can prevent accidental edits to critical data. We hope this guide helped you understand how to lock and unlock columns in Google Sheets. Stay tuned for more Google Sheets tips and tricks!