need help with protected cells

[loneill]

I'm constructing a budget template with account numbers in rows and cost centers in columns. I don't know in advance how many cost centers my budget directors are planning. I want to protect the formulas to prevent them from being overwritten. I was thinking that the way around this was to set up a column template with the cells protected and have the directors copy it, but when I did that, the cells that were supposed to be protected in the copied cells were not. Is there a better way for me to do this?

 

[Jerry Sullivan]

Hello and Welcome,

I'm not sure this is the problem you were having, but you typically need to do two things to keep a user from accidently overwriting your formulas:

Lock the Cell(s)
Protect the Sheet

You might also want to use colors (fonts and/or fill) to make it easy for users to tell which cells are for data input versus the locked and protected cells that are not.