I built a financial report that's heavily formatted with boxes, colors, etc.
Is there any way to protect the format, yet allow users to edit the data?
Particularly for filling-in data, it's hard for people to remember to use
"Paste Special Formula" or "Values", so often the formatting gets obliterated
when users just drag to enter the data. Thank you.

If you make sure all the cells you don't want changed are locked (FORAMT--
CELLS--PROTECTION) and the ones you want to allow them to change are
UNLOCKED, then go to TOOLS--PROTECTION-- PROTECT SHEET





"Clorox" wrote:

I built a financial report that's heavily formatted with boxes, colors, etc.
Is there any way to protect the format, yet allow users to edit the data?
Particularly for filling-in data, it's hard for people to remember to use
"Paste Special Formula" or "Values", so often the formatting gets obliterated
when users just drag to enter the data. Thank you.

I realize this is way late, but I have JUST figured out a cool workaround for
this problem. It's not elegant, but it works.

Merge two cells. The resulting merged cell is format-proof. I mean, you
can format it, but if someone copies and pastes from another cell with a
different format, the format of the merged cell will not change.

"Clorox" wrote:

I built a financial report that's heavily formatted with boxes, colors, etc.
Is there any way to protect the format, yet allow users to edit the data?
Particularly for filling-in data, it's hard for people to remember to use
"Paste Special Formula" or "Values", so often the formatting gets obliterated
when users just drag to enter the data. Thank you.