Lock or Unlock Cells in Excel Add-in with code example

Lock

Protect entire workbook, but you want to allow user to some cells, the lock cells feature make it happens. Before you protect workbook or sheet, you should unlock cells which you would like user to be available for editing.

Steps

Select cells which you would like to lock
Right click and from popup command list select Format cells, or you can hit CTRL + 1 key from keyboard as short hand and a popup will appear having following tabs:
- Number
- Alignment
- Font
- Border
- Fill
- Protection

Select protection tab, point to be noticed here : If you try these steps on a workbook or worksheet you haven’t protected, you’ll see the cells are already locked.

Now click on the Review tab in the ribbon, in the Changes group, select either Protect Sheet or Protect Workbook, and then reapply protection. Let’s write some code to achieve the same:

VBA code example

Public Sub LockCellsExample()
	'Declare Rane object
	Dim oRange as Range
	
	'Bind selection
	Set oRange=Selection
	
	'Unlock cells
	oRange.Cells.Locked=False
	
	'Protect sheet
	ActiveSheet.Protect "12345"
	
	'Cleanup
	Set oRange = Nothing
End Sub

C# code example

private void btnLockCell_Click(object sender, RibbonControlEventArgs e)
{
	//retain active row selection
	excel.Range oRange = Globals.ThisAddIn.Application.Selection;
	//Performing locking
	oRange.Cells.Locked = false;
	//build sheet object using parent method
	excel.Worksheet oSheet = oRange.Parent;
	//protect sheet
	oSheet.Protect("12345");
}

Let’s see output of above code step by step when we run it. Also, I have used one more trick where I build sheet object from Parent property of Range object so please do not confuse.

Step 1: make selection to your range

Step 2: run the code and right click over selected range to see actual locking is done or not:

If you notice in the right click popup menu mostly commands are disabled which shows you made a right move. Now to test try to edit any cells which you highlighted during Lock operation the Excel will allow you but if you try to make changes in other area you will not be able to do.

Next >> Create Live Clock using Excel VBA

Share on Facebook

VBA Basic and Advanced Questions and Answers

Basic Q&A Q. VBA stands for? Ans: Visual Basic for Applications Q. What is VBA? Ans: VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) is a scripting language. It can be used to automate most of the Microsoft Office Applications like Excel, Word, PowerPoint, MS Access, Outlook etc. Q. Types of available modules in VBA VBA contains four […]

Export Generic Collection to PDF ASP.Net Core MVC

PDF Sometime you may in need to export data in PDF. Following code will use Syncfusion Package and give you ready made Table pushed from Generic collection. Put below code in Repository Put below code in Controller JavaScript Code Finally you can attach id to an element in html and in JavaScript on Document ready […]

Export Excel ASP.Net Core MVC

Excel Export Following Example helps you to export excel from database in a generic way using EPPlus library. Requirement EPPlus Nuget Package Code to Repository Supporting Method Code to Controller Code to JavaScript JavaScript Supporting Method You can hit ExportToExcel() call in document ready method in JavaScript document by pointing any id written in HTML […]

Save/Retrieve Session ASP.Net Core MVC

Session Plays a vital role while dealing with caching in your browser. ASP.Net Core offers Session caching fast and reliable way. Here is the practical example. Put following code anywhere in common class or Repository, it has two methods Generic in nature Add/Get. Add Method will allow you to cache object in Browser memory and […]

Number List in Word Document using C# code example

Number List Microsoft Word offers feature by which you can auto number your list in various formats. In this article we will write code to dynamically generate a numbered list in a document using C#. C# Code example Note: You have to add Microsoft Word Interop library as reference to enable Using statement or create […]

Sorting in Microsoft Word using VBA (Visual Basic for Applications)

Sorting Do you know, Microsoft Word has capability to perform sorting over a document. In this article we will write code to sort paragraphs in Alphabetical order using visual basic for applications code. Before code Code example Put above code in a module, Select number of paragraphs that you would like to sort in A-Z […]

EPPlus Open Office Xml Office solution using C#

EPPlus Is an open Office XML solution, highly useful library capable to manipulate Microsoft Excel similar to Introp APIs. Why EPPlus? As per Microsoft the solutions (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook etc) built for client architecture but what about Servers? Let’s take an example that I have recently faced and EPPlus helped me a lot here. […]

String vs StringBuilder C#.Net with code example

String C# class which offers capability to store any type of string data into a variable. Strings are immutable (non-modifiable) cause performance overhead because each time we modify a string it creates a copy of modified instance into the memory, hence, as a practice string should be avoided for large string operations. Following is the […]

Var vs. Dynamic C# with code example

Var vs. Dynamic C# offers variety with flavors to accomplish the task to the developers. var keyword defines a static nature which gets resolve at compile-time introduced in C# 3.0 where dynamic gets resolved at runtime introduced in C# 4.0. Var is a statically type variable, which means values of these variables gets decoded at […]

Multi-threading in C#.Net with step by step code example

Multi-threading Is a concept to execute multiple tasks or process simultaneously. Basically multi-threading enables paths to your application to execute multiple processes. Multi-threading can be achieved in C# using System.Threading name space which provides complete control over threading. Let’s write example code where we will execute two different methods to print numbers using loop and […]