I noticed that once a document is protected (with user only allowed to select
unlocked cells), the first unprotected cell appears selected.

Normally, this would be fine, except that I have a situation where the first
unlocked cell is visibible only under rare circumstances, when the value of
another cell is say lower than 3. I did this w/ conditional formulas and it
works just great.

The problem is that when I protect the sheet, that "invisible" cell gets
highlighted and even shows the dropdown menu arrow. It does not show the
formatting, cell content or outline, but it looks pretty funny and sort of
defies the purpose of having the cell hidden.... I don't want the user to
even know the cell w/ menu is there except for very few circumstances.

Is there any way to "bypass" this default, and to make the first cell
selected (after protection) be another unlocked cell, and not this one?

Thanks ya'll