I'd say that someone locked those cells--maybe it was an accident.

One way would be to select a range (all three cells if you want), then:
Edit|clear|All

When you clear all, it resets the cell to the normal style. And unless you've
changed that normal style, the cell will be locked.

One solution is to change the normal style so that the default "lockedness" is
not locked. Another is to train the users to not use edit|clear|all. Just use
Edit|clearcontents or hit the delete key.

To unlock those cells, you'll have to unprotect the worksheet first.
Then select the 3 cells
format|cells|protection tab|uncheck Locked
then reprotect the worksheet.

You still may have to know the password.


mmap hq wrote:

Lets see if I can explain this better:

We have a column that we enter data into. There are several hundred cells in
that col.
When we try to enter data in 3 of the cells we get: 'the cell or chart you
are ... is protected & therefore read-only'.

Yes we can go up to protection & unprotect the sheet & then enter data.

So how did those 3 cells get locked & how can we unlock those 3 cells? TIA

"Dave Peterson" wrote in message
...
Cells can be locked or unlocked.
Worksheets can be protected or unprotected.

You can have a bunch of unlocked cells on a protected worksheet so that
you can
type anything you want into them. That protected sheet could have 3
locked
cells that can't be changed.

Did you look at the menu to see if "unprotect sheet" is shown?

If it isn't (you'd see "protect sheet"), then it's not the worksheet
protection.

But I don't have a guess what it could be. Maybe you could explain what
happens
when you try to change these cells. (Developers could do their best to
keep you
out of those cells without locking the cell and protecting the sheet.)

TED MEDIN wrote:

"Dave Peterson" wrote in message
...
Tools|Protection|unprotect sheet
(You may need to supply a password)

Not the problem. Only 3 cells of the column are protected (?). Rest of
the
column is unprotected (or something).
All the sheets are supposedly the same & only the DEC sheet has this
problem.

--

Dave Peterson

--

Dave Peterson