Still no ability to lock cells?

Question

Still no ability to lock cells?

Words cannot express how disappointed i am after the latest build of new numbers. Without the ability to lock a cell, i cannot build and share spreadsheets that others can reliably use for data entry. A single misclick and the formula is gone, the sheet is broken. Is there a way to work around this crippling limitation? After years of waiting and lobbying apple, it is still down to the community to find a workaround in numbers for what is trivially easy in the old appleworks, or excel.

Posted on Apr 8, 2014 7:37 AM

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Answer 1

Apr 8, 2014 7:43 AM in response to Brian Findlay

Brian,

I think the best way to deal with this particular limitation is to place input data in one table, then perform calculations in additional, locked tables.

All the best. Personally I like this method becuase then it is easy to know which items are changable and which are not. Cell-by-cell locking means you have to inspect something for each cell to know whether it is locked.

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Answer 2

SGIII

Level 8

35,288 points

Apr 8, 2014 7:23 PM in response to Brian Findlay

Brian,

Seconding Wayne's comments: It is good practice anyway to separate data input and calculations as much as possible, whether using Numbers or any other spreadsheet. Numbers works best with smaller discrete tables rather than "one big sheet" common in other spreadsheets. It's easy in Numbers to have some tables for data input (unlocked) and other tables for calculations and summaries (locked, if needed, to reduce that chance that formulas get overwritten).

SG

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