Hide and protect formulas in Excel.Q. When I circulate cir·cu·late v. cir·cu·lat·ed, cir·cu·lat·ing, cir·cu·lates v.intr. 1. To move in or flow through a circle or circuit: blood circulating through the body. 2. my statistical Excel A full-featured spreadsheet for Windows and the Macintosh from Microsoft. It can link many spreadsheets for consolidation and provides a wide variety of business graphics and charts for creating presentation materials. worksheet to users outside my company, I need to protect the underlying confidential formulas but also keep the worksheet easy for users to enter their data. Any ideas? A. Try using Excel's Protection; it can hide underlying formulas and protect them from any attempted change. Here's how it works: Before you enable Protection be sure to format the affected cells (right-clicking opens the menu that includes Format Cells) so they display their results--not the underlying formula--in the format of your choosing. Then, while still in Format Cells, click on the Protection tab, check Locked and Hidden, and click on OK (see screenshot See screen shot. below). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Now go to the Excel toolbar A row or column of on-screen buttons used to activate functions in the application. Many toolbars are customizable, letting you add and delete buttons as required. Toolbars may be fixed in position or may float, which means they can be dragged to a more convenient location in the and click on Tools, Protection, Protect Sheet (see screenshot below). Make sure to place a check next to Protect worksheet and contents of locked cells. The defaults in the menu under Allow all users of this worksheet to: are Select locked cells and Select unlocked cells. Check any other options you want and enter a password, which appears as dots. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Be aware that if you fail to enter a password and click on OK, the cell is still hidden but anyone can reverse the protection by going through the above routine and clicking on Unprotect Sheet. STANLEY ZAROWIN, a former Jof A senior editor, is now a contributing editor A contributing editor is a magazine job title that varies in responsibilities. Most often, a contributing editor is a freelancer who has proven ability and readership draw. to the magazine. His e-mail address See Internet address. e-mail address - electronic mail address is zarowin@mindspring.com. 
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