how to make an excel spreadsheet password protected

How To Password Protect Excel Documents for Businesses and Organizations For this reason, it’s essential to learn how to password protect Excel worksheets from securing your data. Work-related documents and files containing sensitive, confidential information are best protected with a password. Remember that locking a file with a password does not necessarily protect your file from malicious intent.If you regularly work with Microsoft documents, you’ll likely have lots of Excel and Word files stored on your laptop or in a cloud folder. You still run the risk of passwords falling into the hands of unintended users. Be cautious when sharing files or passwords with other users.It’s not always secure to distribute password-protected files that contain sensitive information such as credit card numbers.Make sure that the Caps Lock key is turned off when you enter a password for the first time.

There are no restrictions on the passwords you use with regards to length, characters or numbers, but passwords are case-sensitive.

It might be a good idea to keep a copy of your password in a safe place or create a strong password that you’ll remember.

IT can’t retrieve forgotten passwords.

If the document had a permissions password, type it in the Enter Password box, and then click OK.

If the document had only a Document Open password, click OK to remove it from the document.

Your options vary depending on the type of password security attached to the document:.

You can remove security from an open PDF if you have the permissions to do so. At the prompt to confirm the password, retype the appropriate password in the box and click Use this option to create security envelopes. Users can open the document without a password. Requires a password to open file attachments.

Encrypt All Document Contents Except MetadataĮncrypts the contents of a document but still allows search engines access to the document metadata.

If this option is selected, search engines cannot access the document metadata. To apply 256-bit AES encryption to documents created in Acrobat 8 and 9, select Acrobat X and Later.Įncrypts the document and the document metadata. Acrobat X And Later (PDF 1.7) encrypts the document using 256-bit AES.Acrobat 7.0 And Later (PDF 1.6) encrypts the document using the AES encryption algorithm with a 128-bit key size.Acrobat 6.0 And Later (PDF 1.5) encrypts the document using 128-bit RC4.

For example, Acrobat 7 cannot open a PDF encrypted for Acrobat X and later. It is important to choose a version compatible with the recipient's version of Acrobat or Reader. Options control compatibility with previous versions and type of encryptionĬompatibility option you choose determines the type of encryption used.

How to make an excel spreadsheet password protected