Google Sheets Beginners: Protecting cells, ranges and sheet tabs (23) [updated Feb 2022]

Google Sheets

Have you ever had your editors edit something on your Google Sheet that they weren’t meant to? Find out how to protect cells, ranges and sheet tabs in Google Sheets.

The main tutorial

In this tutorial, I’ll cover,

1. Why you may need to protect certain parts of your Google Sheet 00:02
2. Protecting a range of cells. 00:50
3. Selecting editors to your protected range. 01:22
4. How protected ranges look for the user. 01:46
5. Protecting entire columns. 02:35
6. Editor hierarchy. 03:18
7. What to protect? 04:13
8. The ‘protect’ sidebar. 05:17
9. Protecting an entire sheet tab. 05:57
10. Viewing a list of what has been protected in your Google Sheet. 07:17
11. Hot tip for hiding sheet tabs from other users. 07:42

If you enjoy the video and want to learn more about how to use Google Sheets, check out the Youtube Playlist:

Google Sheets Shorts: Beginners

How to prevent editors from moving columns and rows

You can prevent editors from moving columns and rows by selecting a range of rows, for example, A1:E1 and preventing the user from editing those cells. Now when the editor tries to move any of those columns, they will not be able to.

check out the video tutorial below for more on this:

1. 00:00 The problem
2. 00:38 The solution
3. 01:34 Testing the solution
4. 02:14 Bonus 1 – hiding non-editable ranges
5. 03:02 Bonus 2 – Allow editors to hide and unhide selected columns

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