You can select all cells on a sheet using Ctrl + a(twice in Excel 2003)

Or clicking on the intesection button left of A and above 1

If you go to ToolsCustomizeCommandsFormat and scroll down you will find a
padlock icon.

Move it to your Toolbar.

After selecting all cells simply click on the padlock.

It toggles "locked" off/on.

To have the default for each sheet to be unlocked you would need to create a
new default Template for new workbooks/worksheets.

If you want that see this message.

http://groups.google.com/group/micro...+author:dibben


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

On Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:22:40 -0800, "Joe User" <joeu2004 wrote:

Apparently, by default, all cells in a worksheet are locked (Format Cells
Protection). Consequently, when I set worksheet protection (Tools
Protection Protect Sheet Password), all cells are protected.

I want to protect just 4 cells. So I think I want the default for all cells
to be unlocked. Then I would lock the 4 cells and set worksheet protection.

Of course, I could manually select every cell in the worksheet (A1:IV65536)
and change the Protection format to unlock. But besides being a "pain", it
appears to increase the worksheet size "unnecessarily".

Is there a better way to change the default cell protection to unlocked?