How to Allow Edit Ranges in Microsoft Excel – 2023

Giving full, partial, or no permission to edit the content of a particular range in a worksheet and protecting the rest of the worksheet completely with a password is called Allow Edit Ranges.

If you want to set a password for the entire worksheet and also give a password to a range of your choice without editing, You can give the password to any user you trust to make changes in the Excel spreadsheet.

2 Ways to Allow Edit Ranges in Excel

1. Allow Users to Edit

On the “Review” tab, in the Protect group, click “Allow Edit Ranges” to open a dialogue box

Then click “New” on the dialogue box

Allow Edit Ranges Dialogue Box
Allow Edit Ranges Dialogue Box

Now type the range title in the “Title” box and click the up arrow of the “Refers to cells” as in the picture below

Enter Range Title and Select Range
Enter Range Title and Select Range

Select the new range and click the down arrow

Select a New Range
Select a New Range

Now type the range password in the Range password box and click OK (When you click OK, a confirmation password dialogue box will open)

Enter Range Password
Enter Range Password

Again reenter the password to confirm and click OK

Reenter Range Password to Confirm
Reenter Range Password to Confirm

If you want to protect or allow editing another range click on the “New” and follow the same steps explained above

If you want to modify any range that you have protected by password, click “Modify” and change the password and range name

If you want to delete any range that you have protected by password, click “Delete”

After completing the steps above the picture, now protect the worksheet by entering the password. to do so click the “Protect Sheet” to open another dialogue box.

Protect Sheet
Protect Sheet

Now enter the password in the “Password to unprotect sheet” box

Check the box of any option you want to allow users to edit range under “Allow all users of this worksheet to:” and click OK to open a confirm password dialogue box

Enter Password to Protect Sheet
Enter Password to Protect Sheet

Now reenter the password to confirm it and click OK.

Reenter password to protect worksheet
Reenter password to protect worksheet

2. Edit ranges by selecting the specific range:

In this method of allowing users to edit ranges, a user is fully allowed to edit ranges without entering a password. But a user may partially or not allow editing the worksheet. It depends on the options you have selected.

Select the range that you want to allow users to edit range

Right-click on the selected range

Click format cells

Right click on the selected range
Right-click on the selected range

On the Format Cells dialogue box, click “Protection” untick “Locked” and click OK

Format Cells
Format Cells

Now go to the review tab and click “Protect Sheet

Enter the password to a worksheet in the “Password to unprotect sheet” box and tick or untick different options to allow or disallow users to enter data in a worksheet (except the selected range), then click OK to open a dialogue box

Again enter the password to confirm and click OK.

Enter Password to Unprotect Sheet
Enter Password to Unprotect Sheet

What is meant by Allow Edit Ranges in Excel?

Allow edits feature is very useful for you to allow others to edit a particular range in Excel and deny the rest of the entire range.