Lock single cell

ygoldgrab

It would be very useful to lock a single cell.

I see it's been asked many times on the community but I did not find anyone submitted it as an idea

ker9

This is dependent upon what you are trying to achieve, but you might be able to put that single piece of data in a locked summary field, which can be referenced in formulas.

ygoldgrab

In my particular case, I had put defaults in my Navigation and Summary headers so that Sorting the columns would still keep the Navigation section in place. (I had formatted the defaults to be unseen by making the font and background the same as the Navigation header).

The Issue that keeps happening is that my users delete the defaults and the navigation header ends up in middle of the sheet!

If only I can lock those cells with the defaults!

dhall

I'm adding to this, I would like this feature to lock very specific cells that have a formula in it.

An example would be this formula we use for Parent Cell and their Status based on Children Status:

=IF(COUNT(CHILDREN()) = COUNTIF(CHILDREN(), "Complete"), "Complete", IF(OR(CONTAINS("In Progress", CHILDREN()), AND(COUNTIF(CHILDREN(), "Complete") > 0, COUNTIF(CHILDREN(), "Not Started") >= 0, COUNTIF(CHILDREN(), "Upcoming") >= 0)), "In Progress", IF(COUNT(CHILDREN()) = COUNTIF(CHILDREN(), "Upcoming"), "Upcoming", "Not Started")))

Another example is a formula I've seen (but not used) for Parent Cell Checkboxes. I can't find it right now, but it essentially counts the children and shows "5 of 7".

We don't want to lock the row as the owner may change, or we need to add to a task description, and we don't want to have to go through the process of locking and unlocking the row.

dhall

Hey all, I saw this was updated so I wanted to include my additional use case for locking a single cell.

I mentioned in my previous post we have a formula that we use on checkbox/flag columns that allows the Parent to count the children and quickly show us summary.

Formula:  =COUNTIF(CHILDREN(), 1) + " of " + COUNT(CHILDREN())

Pretty straight forward formula. The results would come out like the below screenshot:

This would be a cell that we would lock.

ksmith1

Having the ability to lock the content at the cell level would be a great thing to add. There have been times when a team member accidentally edited a cell that I had entered a formula into and I had to re-enter the formula. Being able to lock down a particular cell would prevent this.

Kathryn Wells

Being able to lock a cell could help constrain hard deadlines with adjustable predecessors.

Trish Dillon

🔐 🏁 in our use case - we will need a cell to auto-lock based on month-end closing for financials after data is entered and approved.

Carrie Barnett

Sometimes, I need to lock just one cell rather than a whole row - it would be great to be able to do so.

MelodyV

Agree - this would be a very useful feature. In my case, I need people to be able to edit the Status column, but only for grandchild rows. I need parent and child rows to be locked because they are based on formulas. I can't just lock the parent/child rows themselves because I need users to be able to assign parent/child rows to themselves or other users.

Lauree Fleming

Could we please have the ability to lock single cells in a sheet.

Laura McDonald

I agree, this would be a useful feature which would allow me to error-proof a process. Currently I have a published sheet in which many of the rows and columns are locked, but a few need to remain unlocked as it requires the user to manually input data into cells within them. However, there are other cells within that same row/column that they should not be editing/deleting formulas from, but are currently able to and often do in error. If I were able to lock those single cells within the sheet, this would prevent them from deleting the formulas.

BrooksN

Similar to the comments above, we have a project sheet where there are certain deadlines that can not be changed by the project manager, and need to go through a specific process before they can be changed. Others can be adjusted as needed by the project manager. We need to be able to lock the specific deadlines without locking the others. Locking the rows will not work because the Project Managers need to be able to update other information for the task such as status. Being able to lock those specific cells would be a huge step in protecting the sheet from inadvertent mistakes being made.

Arundhati

Sometimes I know the end date for a task but don't have the duration and start date. I would like to be able to enter the end date and lock it so that we I enter the start date or duration later the end date does not move.

Apollo W.

I need people to not be able to change SOME start dates in predecessor columns (to avoid breaking predecessors), while also being able to change the end dates.

A better solution, however, would be to allow us to move the start dates without predecessors breaking and have Smartsheet be able to add in the required lead or lag time to the predecessor column, automatically. But locking cells would be good enough for now.

Sherry Fox

On the projects I create it is needed to lock cells in this way too. The projects were originally done via Excel, and I had the ability to lock those cells