I have a spreadsheet I set up for one of our departments who is sending it
out to a group of 60 users and they have to fill it in and send it back.

In the workbook there are only a certain number of cells that are allowed
for data entering and the rest are password protected. For some reason as
soon as a user starts entering data in the unprotected section of the
worksheet the whole sheet becomes unprotected. This is causing issues
because there are some users who are deleting formulas in the workbook. One
other comment ... I have a macro set up so a user chooses a factory and then
its respective product lines show up in the worksheet. In order to get these
columns to hide and unhide the macro first unprotects the worksheet and then
protects it again once it is done running.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!!

Meg