In the past, or a couple of days ago, we have shown you How to Protect and Unprotect an Excel Workbook . This can come in handy when you want to password protect Excel but this doesn’t stop someone for looking at your your Excel file. That can be quite a problem if you don’t want them stealing your information since they can still open the file and make a copy of the data regardless of the password. Here is how to stop them from even looking at your precious Excel file by by requiring a password to open Excel 2007 or 2010 workbook.
Before we begin you are probably wondering why you would want to password protect Excel or require a password to open an Excel workbook. This is a really simple question, to protect the data you have in your workbooks. This could mean formatting or just sensitive data like people names, social security numbers, and other personal information. Here is a good explanation of what sensitive data is. If your data meets one of these requirements I highly recommend protecting your files.
How to Require a Password to Open Excel
Launch Excel 2010 or 2007 and open the file you want to protect. Either go to the office button or the File drop down. In Excel 2010 go to the Info menu item, for Excel 2007 go to Prepare, and find the Encrypt with Password.
You will be asked to enter a password in. Remember they are case sensitive and if you lose your password it will be hard to recover.
After you’ve reentered your password save your document and try to open it.
Nothing better than a locked down Excel file. If you want to remove it, simply go back to Encrypt with password and clear the password and click ok and save.
Now that you are down you now have complete control if someone tries to open the file and steal your data. If you want more Microsoft Excel help check out our forums or post a comment below.
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