Unit 3. Advance. More options for saving work books

Protecting work books

With Excel2003 we can protect our work books by means of passwords.

There are two types of passwords:

Password to open: only people who know it may have access to the book.

Password to modify: everybody may have access to the work book, but only those people who know the password can modify it.

Passwords can have up to 15 characters. Capital and small letters are distinguished.

If you wish to protect access to work books, procede the following way:

Select menu File.

Choose option Save As...

Click on the arrow on the right side of the button .

Choose option General Options

The dialogue box Save options that we shown below, will appear:

Write password in the box Password to open or in the box Password to modidy according to your type of password.

When you write your password ***** will show so you can see it

Click on button OK.

The dialogue box on the right will appear, so you can confirm your password (this is a way to make sure that the password we introduce is the right one)

Reenter the password in the box again

Click on button OK to exit.

If we have not enter the same password both times, Excel2003 will require that we reenter it.

Click on button Save to close save as box

The protection effect on access to work books, is checked when we open it.

If we have used a password to open, the dialogue box on the right will appear.

If you know the password and you enter it and click OK.

Excel2003 will find the book so you can do any modification you wish.

If you don't know the password, Excel2003 will not let you open it.

If we have used a password to modify, the dialogue box on the right will appear.

If you know the password and you enter it and click OK.

Excel2003 will find the book so you can do any modification you wish.

If you don't know the password, you will be able to press button Read Only in which case, Excel2003 will open the book but modification will have to be saved with another name.

If you want to delete a password, you have to open the book with the password in order to have the possibility of modifying it and then follow the steps necessary to create a password but delete it from the box.