While power usage may still be Microsoft Excel’s strong point, Google Docs and its spreadsheets offer you an alternative, especially when you’re on the go. It’s good enough for 20k rows and helps you with web based dashboard too. Real-time collaboration with multiple members of your team is definitely its selling point. If you are working with lighting analysis and simpler modeling, the Google Docs Spreadsheet is a good choice.
Real-time collaboration is a boon, but it can also be a disaster if team members start ‘invading’ all data cells and sheets at once. For example, there may be complex formulas that are not accessible to everyone. It can lead to data chaos. Google Docs recently addressed this by introducing restrictions on editing cells (and also another layer of protection that you can also protect the entire sheet).
Protect cell ranges and lock them down
Let’s demonstrate how protected ranges work with this Google Docs Spreadsheet and sample data:
Step 1. Open the Google Docs Spreadsheet that you will collaborate on. Select the range of cells you want to protect and lock. On the menu, go to Data -> Named and protected ranges. Alternatively, you can right-click anywhere on the spreadsheet and select the same option from the context menu.
Note: Named ranges is a feature that allows you to assign a more memorable name to a cell or a group of cells.
Step 2. In the dialog box that opens on the right, you can give your Named Range a nickname (keep the nickname short so you can use it in formulas). Click Protect And Finished. You can add multiple protected ranges.
Step 3. A dialog box opens listing all the document collaborators and their access levels. To change a collaborator’s access to the scope, click the drop-down menu to the right of their name and choose to give them View or Edit permission.
Team members can have edit access to the remaining cells, but not to the protected cell. They will receive an error message if they try to modify protected cells or ranges.
For protected ranges, team members will see them marked with a checkered background as you can see in the screen below:
If the background pattern makes it difficult to read the spreadsheet content, you can hide the protected ranges by pointing the mouse at See menu and uncheck Protected range. This does not remove the protection, but only makes the protected range of cells more readable.
Next time you try out a spreadsheet in Google Docs, keep this feature in mind. I hope you will come back to this tutorial and take the next method. Let us know if this guide was helpful.
Categories: How to
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/
