Block 6

Unit III–Protecting and printing worksheets

3.1 Introduction
3.2 Objectives
3.3 Protect worksheet data
3.4 Unlock Cells
3.5 Unprotect worksheet
3.6 Print preview worksheet
3.7 Page setup
3.8 Margins
3.9 Page break
3.10 Summary
3.11 Answers/Solutions
3.12 Further reading

1
3.1 Introduction
Variety of user access services of Microsoft Excel as a tool used for storing different
kinds of data. Some data is sensitive regarding confidentiality and secrecy also. Excel
provides layered protection for such private data elements. You can protect your data
against unauthorized access by using protection mechanism available in Excel. The
features of Excel related to protecting data cells, worksheets and workbooks by applying
password protection are not only providing security to data but can also be used to
represent information in a more understandable and clear manner. You can hide
unnecessary details to avoid confusion to understand the data and related information.

The data protection features of Excel also help the owner as well as other users to
prevent accidental changes to data. Hidden and locked data in excel workbook can not
be encrypted thus protected against unauthorized changes.
In this unit you will learn the ways to protect your data against unauthorized access.
The techniques to unprotect data are also discussed to allow authorized user to access
and use data. Also you will learn to protect and unprotect cells in a worksheet the
complete data in a worksheet and workbook.

Customization is required before we take the final printout of the desired data. The print
preview is also explained with its significance.

3.2 OBJECTIVES
After going through this Unit, you should be able to

• Protect the data in the worksheet from unauthorized access

• Practice to lock only a few cells on a worksheet
• Protect and Unprotect the workbook structure
• Use the Print preview worksheet feature of Excel
• Set a page for printing using Page setup feature
• Set the Margins and Page-breaks

3.3 PROTECT WORKSHEET DATA

We can protect our worksheet data by using password protection against, unauthorized
access. An unauthorized user can make data inconsistent by deleting or editing the
important contents of important and confidential data. To safe guard our data, we have
to follow some steps.

Suppose following data is to be protected against unauthorized access. Now the

meaning of access is multidimensional. We can make this data viewable but not editable
or we can make this data invisible also. We can also allow some of the cells editable
whereas others can be read only. In the same manner we can also, fix the set of values
permissible with respect to editable cells.

But here we will start our journey of learning data security by protecting worksheet.

2
The following steps are to be followed to do so

I. Select the worksheet to be protected

II. Go to tools menu
III. Point to protection and select protect sheet
IV. Write password to unprotect sheet
V. Renter password for confirmation
VI. Click OK

Figure 1

3
Figure 2

Figure 3

4
Figure 4
In the following figure, we can see that if some unauthorized person tries to change
the contents of cell E5 ie marks of Mr. Arun Bakshi, Excel will generate a message
against the action and will not allow any kind of change in the cell value. It will also
suggest the procedure to make changes through proper procedure. Thus only the
authorized user will be able to make changes by unprotecting the worksheet by
supplying correct password.

Figure 5

Another important observation is, if you protect any sheet, some of the commands
will automatically become inactive / ineffective. For example, just observe the
figure6 given below. If you right click on unprotected sheet, named Comparison,
you can see there are 14 commands which are active at this time. But if you right
click on the protected sheet, named Result, only 7 commands are active in figure7,
rest of the 7 becomes inactive taking security of the data in to consideration.

5
 Figure 6

Figure 7

HOW TO HIDE CELL FORMULA IN A PROTECTED SHEET

(Prevent a formula to display in formula bar)
Steps to hide formula

I. Select the range of cells whose formulas you want to hide. You can also select nonadjacent
ranges (nonadjacent selection: A selection of two or more cells or ranges that don't touch
each other. When plotting nonadjacent selections in a chart, make sure that the combined
selections form a rectangular shape.) or the entire sheet.
II. On the Format menu, click Cells, and then click the Protection tab.
III. Select the Hidden check box.
IV. Click OK.
V. On the Tools menu, point to Protection, and then click Protect Sheet.
VI. Make sure the Protect worksheet and contents of locked cells check box is selected.

Diagram 1 explains the procedure.

6
7
PRINTING EXCEL FORMULAS

Steps to print Excel Formulas

I. Go to 'Tools' menu, then 'Options' option, then the 'View' tab.
II. Choose 'Formulas' option (under Window Options section) then click OK
III. Click on 'File' menu then 'Print' option, then OK.

Note : Don't forget to reverse the process when you finished

Diagram 2 explains the procedure.

Diagram 2

8
 HOW TO HIDE ROWS AND COLUMNS
We can also hide particular rows and columns in Excel.

Following Illustration will explain the procedure to hide row(s).

STEPS TO HIDE ROW(S)

I. Select the row(s) to hide

II. Right click on the selected row(s)
III. Choose Hide from the pop up menu

STEPS TO UNHIDE ROW(S)

I. Select the rows above and below the hidden row(s), here, Row 6 and 9.
II. Right click and choose unhide

Diagram 3 explains the procedure.

Diagram 3

9
 STEPS TO HIDE COLUMN(S)

I. Select the Column(s) to hide

II. Right click on the selected column(s)
III. Choose Hide from the pop up menu

STEPS TO UNHIDE COLUMN(S)

I. Select the rows above and below the hidden row(s), here, Row 6 and 9.
II. Right click and choose unhide

Diagram 4 explains the procedure.

Diagram 4

10
HOW TO SET PASSWORD TO EDIT SPECIFIC RANGE

STEPS TO SET PASSOWRD TO EDIT SPECIFIC RANGE

I. Select the range

II. Go to Tools Menu
III. Select Protection
IV. Choose Allow users to edit range
V. Click on New Button
VI. Enter password
VII. Reenter password
VIII. Click on Protect Sheet in Allow users to edit range dialog box
IX. Enter Password to protect sheet
X. Click OK
XI. Reenter the password
XII. Click OK

Now try to change the data in the protected range. Excel will ask you to enter the password.

Diagram 5, Diagram 6 and Diagram 7 explain the procedure.

11
Diagram 5

12
Diagram 6

When you try to change the data in password protected range the dialog box ask you to
enter the password as shown below.

Diagram 7

13
HOW TO GRANT SELECTED USERS EDIT RANGE WITHOUT PASSWORD

You can also allow particular users to edit the rang without password. To do so,
click on permissions in the Allow users to edit Ranges and choose the users from the
list of users to allow them editing with asking password.

Steps to grant selected users edit range without password

I. Click on permission in the allow users to edit range dialog box

II. Click add in the permission for range1 dialog box
III. Click add in the select users or group dialog box
IV. Click OK in the select users or group dialog box
V. Click on the OK for range1 dialog box

Diagram 8 and Diagram 9 explain the procedure.

Diagram 8

14
Diagram 9

15
3.4 UNLOCK CELLS
1. Select the cell or range of cells
2. Right click on the selected cell(s)
3. Click on Format Cell(s) command, figure 8
4. Select protection tab, figure 9
5. Click on Locked Check Box to uncheck it, being already checked, figure 10
6. Click OK

Figure 9

Figure 8

Figure 10

16
Steps to Protect Workbook
If you want to protect your data with more robust security mechanism you must
protect workbook along with worksheets. At the worksheet level protection, though
the data cells can not be altered or deleted, but the whole sheet can be deleted along
with the data. If this happens, there is no security for the data against well planned
threats to data.
Figure 11, shows the available commands with respect to worksheet named Result,
which is protected sheet. We can see, there is a command named delete which is
active, means we can delete sheet Result permanently by clicking on the delete
command. This shows another loop hole in the data security.

Figure 11

But if we protect workbook along with worksheet, in that case no unauthorized user can
delete the worksheet, thus data is more secure.

The steps to protect the workbook are given below and shown in figures12 and figure13.
1. Go to tools menu
2. Point to protection and select protect workbook
3. Write password (Optional), If you give password it will be asked to enter when
you try to unprotect the workbook. If password is not entered, user will not be
asked to enter the password to unprotect the workbook.
4. Click OK

Figure 12

17
 Figure 13

Figure 14

Now one can easily, observe from the figure14 that, delete command along with other
four commands is inactive with respect to the active worksheet. Thus sheet data is more
safe and secure against intentional and unintentional deletion.

Note: Remember your password, if you forget it, you can not
unprotect your workbook. Also, passwords must be entered in the proper
manner taking in to consideration the lower case, upper case or
combination of both.

18
Check your progress 1

Question 1: Fill in the blanks

1. For a cell or object protection to be in effect, your must turn on _______

protection.
2. _______ box in the _______under _______removes the checkmark which indicates
the selected cells will not be locked.
3. For cell or object protection to be in effect your must turn on _______
4. To protect the worksheet, choose Tools _______ protect sheet.
5. You can Protect the sheet for three types of Excel data _______, _______ and
_______

Question 2: Give reason, If you lock the cells you want to protect and still you can
change the entries in those cells.

19
3.5 UNPROTECT WORKSHEET
If you want to edit worksheet data, you have to unprotect the worksheet. The steps
to unprotect worksheet are given below.

• Click on the sheet name to unprotect on the sheet tab

5. Go to tools menu
6. Point to protection and select unprotect sheet
7. Write password in password textbox to unprotect sheet
• Click OK
Now the worksheet is unprotected. To see the effect, again right click on Result
sheet and observe the pop up menu. All the 14 commands are active, see
Figure17.

Figure 15

Figure 16

20
 Figure 17

3.6 PRINT PREVIEW WORKSHEET

It is always good to prevent than to cure. Thus before we take hardcopy of the document, it is
time and cost saving decision to see the preview of the document to make required changes in the
softcopy
Ways to access print view.

1. From File menu, click on Print Preview Command. OR

2. Click on print preview icon on standard tool bar.

Figure 18

Figure 19 21
Print preview commands

Next

Displays the next page to be printed. If you have multiple worksheets selected and click next
when the last page of a selected worksheet appears, Excel displays the first page of the next
selected worksheet.

Previous

Displays the previous page to be printed. If you have multiple worksheets selected and click
Previous when the first page of a selected worksheet appears, Excel displays the last page of the
previous selected worksheet.

Zoom

Switches between a full-page view of a sheet and a magnified view. The Zoom feature does not
affect printing size. You can also switch between a full-page view and a magnified view of a
worksheet by clicking any area of the worksheet.
Depending on the resolution of your monitor, you may not see certain graphics, such as thin
borders, in full-page view.
Print

Lets you set printing options and then prints the selected worksheet.

Setup

Lets you set options that control the appearance of printed sheets.

Margins

Displays or hides margin handles that you can drag to adjust page margins,
header and footer margins, and column widths.

Page Break Preview

Switches to page break preview, in which you can adjust the page breaks on the active worksheet.
You can also resize the print area and edit the worksheet. The name of the button changes from

22
Page Break Preview to Normal View if you were in page break preview when you clicked Print
Preview
Normal View

Displays the active worksheet in normal view.

Close

Closes the print preview window and returns to the previous view of the active worksheet.
Check your progress 2
Question 1: Fill in the blanks
1. To unprotect the workbook, choose tolls, proecteion,___Unprotect__ workbook.
2. The hidden elements ---don’t—print, when your print the worksheet.
3. Protection option in Tools menu shows total _4_ options.
4. To preview option is available in FILE menu.
5. Print preview helps to Edit the features, which are not as per the requirement of the
hardcopy.
Question 2: Explain the following print preview commands
1. Zoom
2. Page Break Preview

3.7 PAGE SETUP

Page setup is used to set margins (Left, Right, Top, Bottom) before we take final printout as
hardcopy. Softcopy of the document can be seen using print preview option. One can decide to
accept or change the look of the document shown in the preview, before taking the final printout.
Steps to use page setup

6. Click on file menu

7. Click on page setup command
Follow steps given in figure 20 to figure 24 to understand the procedure.

23
Figure 20

Figure 21

Figure 22

24
Figure 23

Figure 24

3.8 MARGINS

25
 Margins are used to set page contents as per the need of the final appearance of
the printed paper.

Steps to set margins for printing

1. Click on the worksheet(s) to print
2. When you enter or change data, the changes affect all selected sheets. These changes may
replace data on the active sheet and other selected sheets.

Action Procedure
A single sheet Click the sheet tab. Click on source sheet name on the sheet
tab. If the desired sheet is not visible,
click on tab scrolling button and select
the desired sheet.

Two or more adjacent sheets Click the tab for the first sheet, and then
hold down SHIFT and click the tab for
the last sheet.
Two or more nonadjacent sheets Click the tab for the first sheet, and then
hold down CTRL and click the tabs for
the other sheets

All sheets in a workbook Right-click a sheet tab, and then click

Select All Sheets on the shortcut menu.

Note: If sheet tabs have been color-coded, the sheet tab name will be
underlined in a user-specified color when selected. If the sheet tab is
displayed with a background color, the sheet has not been selected.

Shortcut Menu : A menu that shows a list of commands relevant to a

particular item. To display a shortcut menu, right-click an item or press
SHIFT+F10.)

Cancel a selection of multiple sheets :To cancel a selection of multiple

sheets in a workbook, click any unselected sheet.

If no unselected sheet is visible, right-click the tab of a selected sheet. Then

click Ungroup Sheets on the shortcut menu.

3. From the File menu, select Page Setup, and then click the Margins tab.
4. Do one of the following:

26
Set page margins

o Enter the required margin for the Top, Bottom, Left, and Right boxes.

Set header or footer margins

o To change the distance from the top edge to the header, enter a new
margin size in the Header box.
o To change the distance from the bottom edge to the footer, enter a new
margin size in the Footer box.

These settings should be smaller than your top and bottom margin
settings, and larger than or equal to the minimum printer margins.

27
 Note

• To see how the margins will affect the printed document, click Print
Preview before the document is printed. To adjust the margins in print
preview, click Margins, and then drag the black margin handles on either
side and at the top of the page.
• After entering page margins, save as option from menu can be used to make
worksheet and workbook templates to apply the customized page margins
to new worksheets or workbooks.

3.9 PAGE BREAK

Page break is a divider that breaks a worksheet into separate pages for printing. page breaks. In
Excel page breaks are inserted automatically on the basis of paper size, scaling options,
margin settings, and also the positions of any manual page breaks that your insert.
To quickly adjust page breaks one can use the page break preview view, to print the exact amount
of pages as per the need.
In the page break view the automatic page breaks are shown by dashed lines and manual page
breaks are shown by solid lines.
Steps to use page break preview

• Select view menu

28
 • Click Page Break Preview
• Do one of the following
I. To move a page break, drag the page break to a new location.
II. To insert a vertical or horizontal page break, select a row or column
below or to the right of where you want to insert the page break, right-
click, and then click Insert Page Break.
III. To remove a page break, drag the page break outside of the page break
preview area.
IV. To remove all manual page breaks, right-click any cell on the
worksheet, and then click Reset All Page Breaks.

Follow steps given in figure 25 to figure 32 to understand the procedure.

Note : Moving an automatic page break changes it to a manual page break.

Related Office Online discussions

Figure 25

29
 Magnified View of Figure 26

Automatic page
Manual page break
break (Dotted Line)

Automatic
Manual page
page break
break
(Dotted Line)

Figure 26

Figure 27 Figure 28

30
 Figure 29
Click on page break, hold &
drag outside the preview area

Figure 30 Removed Page Break

Figure 31 Figure 32 (No Manual Page Breaks

Check your progress 3

Question 1: Fill in the blanks

31
 1. The ____in the page setup dialog box is where you can change the page
orientation and paper size.
2. When you select Excels’ page setup command the page set up dialog box offers
___ tabs.
3. ____ are the empty spaces around the four edges of a page.
4. You can change the margins ____ or ___ your enter data in a workbook.
5. _____ and _____are lines of text that you can print at the top and bottom of every
page in a print job.

Question 2: Give reasons

You have created your own header and footer information and did not get the expected
results when you print the worksheet.

3.10 SUMMARY

In this unit the main focus is given to data security and data printing options. This will
help us to protect our data from unauthorized access and also to get customized look of
data as per the requirement of the user. Various data protection techniques are discussed
like protecting data in specific cells or to protect complete worksheet and workbook
also. We have also learnt the techniques to unprotect data for any editing by the
authorized users. We have also learnt the ways to customize page margins, and page
breaks as per the need. At the end of the unit reader will be well versed with the
required skills and confidence to provide protection to data and customization of
worksheet data before taking the final printout.

3.11 ANSWERS/SOLUTIONS
Check your progress 1
Answer 1: Fill in the blanks

1. Worksheet
2. Locked Check, protection tab, format cells
3. Worksheet protection
4. Protection
5. Contents, Objects, Scenarios

Answer 2: You have to protect the worksheet by choosing tools, protection, protect
sheet. Choose any options you want from protect sheet dialog box. A password is
optional. Finally click OK.

Check your progress 2

Answer 1: Fill in the blanks
1. Unprotect
2. Don’t
3. Four
4. FILE
5. Edit

32
Answer 2:
Zoom : Switches between a full-page view of a sheet and a magnified view. The Zoom
feature does not affect printing size. You can also switch between a full-page view and a
magnified view of a worksheet by clicking any area of the worksheet.
Depending on the resolution of your monitor, you may not see certain graphics, such as
thin borders, in full-page view.
Page Break Preview: Switches to page break preview, in which you can adjust the page
breaks on the active worksheet. You can also resize the print area and edit the
worksheet. The name of the button changes from Page Break Preview to Normal View if
you were in page break preview when you clicked Print Preview.

Check your progress 3

Answer 1: Fill in the blanks

1. Page tab
2. Four.
3. Margins
4. Before, After
5. Header, Footer

Answer 2: Give reasons:

Inc case of unexpected results in header and footer, select None in the suggestion list of
header and hooter. Now you can start all over and create you own custom header and
footer. It is also good to see the preview of the document before printing it. Click the
print preview button and see the appearance of header and footer information.

3.12 Further Reading

1. Excel 2000, No Experience Required, Gene Weisskopf, BPB Publication
2. Microsoft Excel 2000 in 24 hours, SAMS, Techmedia
3. A first cours I computrs 2003 Edition, Vikas publications, Sanjay Saxsena
4. Introduction to Computers with MS-Office 2000 by Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing
Company Limited Authors: Alexis Leon and Mathews Leon
5. http://spreadsheets.about.com
6. www.excelself.com

33