Back to Basics: sharing, moving and protecting the data in Google Sheets
Moving on to another stop of our "Back to Basics" journey, today I will tell you more about managing your spreadsheets. You will learn how to share, move and protect your data in Google Sheets.
As I've already mentioned in my previous article, the main advantage of Google Sheets is the possibility for several people to work with the tables simultaneously. There's no need to email the files or to guess what changes were made by your colleagues anymore. All you need to do is share Google Sheets documents and start working.
How to share Google Sheets files
- To grant access to your tables, press the Share button at the upper right corner of the Google Sheets web-page and enter the names of those users who will work with the table. Decide whether to give the person the rights to edit or comment on the table or only to view the data:
- What is more, you can get an external link to your table and send it to your colleagues and partners. To do that, click Get shareable link at the upper right corner of the sharing window.
- Further on, if you click the Advanced link at the bottom right corner of the same window, you will see the advanced Sharing settings:
There, you will see not only the same shareable link, but also the buttons to share the Google Sheets file on social media. - Right underneath there's a list of those who already have access to the table. If you click the Change option, you will be able to switch the privacy status from Public to Anyone with the link or to Specific people.
- Every person whom you share the table with can view the document by default. For them to be able to edit it, you should use the Invite people option from the advanced settings where you enter their names or addresses and set the appropriate access type. If you skip it, the users will have to request access when they follow the link to the file.
Tip. You can appoint the new owner of the file by clicking the icon with an arrow pointing down beside his or her name and choosing Is owner.
- Finally, Owner settings options enable to limit the number of invitations as well as prohibit downloading, copying and printing the pages for those who are not allowed to make any changes in the tables.
How to move Google Spreadsheets
Saving the files has never been so easy. You don't need to do anything special to save the changes anymore. Google Sheets saves the data automatically with every change made. Let's see how to save the whole document to Google Drive.
- All the files are stored in the Google Drive root directory by default. However, you can create subfolders in Google Drive and arrange your projects in the most convenient way. To move the table to any other folder, just find the document in the list, right-click it and choose the Move to option.
- Another way is to click the folder icon right when you edit the table:
- Of course, you can also drag and drop the documents in Google Drive as you do in the Windows File Explorer.
How to protect cells in Google Sheets
When lots of people have access to your documents, you may want to protect the table, the worksheet or the range of cells.
"What for?", you may ask. Well, one of your colleagues may happen to change or remove the data accidentally. And they may not even notice that. Of course, we can always view the revision history (more on that later) and undo the changes. But it will take some time to look through the whole list and, besides, it will cancel the rest of the "right" changes. To avoid that, you can protect the data in Google Sheets. Let's see how we can make that happen.
Protect the entire spreadsheet
Since we've already covered how to give access to your tables and what rights you can grant the users, the first very simple piece of advice would be this - try to allow viewing the table instead of editing. Thus, you'll reduce the number of unintentional changes to the minimum.
Protect a sheet
Right-click the worksheet tab and choose to Protect sheet. Make sure that the Sheet button is already pressed:
The next step would be to adjust the settings for the users. Press the blue Set permissions button:
- If you select the Show a warning when editing this range radio button, everyone with access to the file will have the access to this sheet as well. Once they try to change something they will get a warning about editing the protected range and they will have to confirm the action. At the same time, you will get an email with the actions your colleagues perform in the document.
- If you select the Restrict who can edit this range radio button, you'll have to enter every single user who'll be able to edit the worksheet.
As a result, you'll see the icon of the padlock on the worksheet tab meaning the sheet is protected. Right-click that tab and choose the Protect Sheet option once again to unlock it:
The settings pane will appear for you to change the settings or remove the protection by clicking the trash bin icon.
Protect cells in Google Sheets
To protect specific cells in Google Sheets, select the range, right-click on it and choose to Protect range:
You'll see a familiar settings pane and be able to set the necessary permissions.
But what if in time you forget what is protected and who can access the data? No worries, this can be easily recalled. Just choose Data > Protected sheets and ranges from the Google Sheets main menu:
Select any of the protected ranges and edit the permissions, or delete the protection by clicking the trash bin icon.
To sum it all up, so far you've learned how to create multiple worksheets with tables, store them in different folders, share them with others and protect cell in Google Sheets without fear of losing or corrupting any important pieces of information.
Next time I'll dig deeper into some aspects of editing the tables and share some peculiar aspects of working in Google Sheets. See you then!
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6 responses to "Back to Basics: sharing, moving and protecting the data in Google Sheets"
Hi there, i've created google sheet and i am the owner of the google sheet. I've protected the cell by different user access. only granted user can modify the cell. everything is well until recently i've granted existing protected cell to a new user. The new user is not able to modify the cell. I've tried so many ways like remove the protected cell and recreate the protected range, re-added back all users inclusive the new user. Unfortunately, the new user still not able to modify the cell, whereas it working fine with other users. please help.
Hi Wawa,
It's hard to tell what may cause problems. It can be the lack of a locale (File > Spreadsheet setting) for both you and the user. It can be an old browser where Google Sheets doesn't work correctly (see system requirements). It can be any setting used to protect the range or share the spreadsheet.
If you've checked all of these and are sure they are not the causes of the issue, please try asking Google support or Help community for assistance:
https://support.google.com/docs/community?hl=en
I am trying to remove cell protection. The instructions say "Select any of the protected ranges and edit the permissions, or delete the protection by clicking the trash bin icon." Where is the trash bin icon? It does not appear on my Google sheet just as it does not appear in the screen shot above.
Hello Myrna,
Once the pane with ranges appears (like on the screenshot above), click on the range. Its settings will open and you'll be able to delete it.
I deal with groups of people who pay for a conference. Each group has a group leader who is in charge of payment. Payments come in throughout the year. I have used a pivot table and slicer to create an 'invoice/statement' on a new tab for each group leader. How can I share this 'invoice tab' without having the group leader be able to see the rest of the information in my google sheet? My goal is to be able to update my main google sheet which will update each 'invoice tab' so that the leader can securely see the updates in real time. In the past I have had to do a lot of cutting and pasting and I would like to progress away from that archaic way of handling things. Thank you.
Hello Michele,
I'm afraid there's no way to share different tabs from one spreadsheet with different people.
As a workaround to manual copy-pasting, I can suggest you to try using the IMPORTRANGE function. It will copy the data to other files and will update there as you make changes to the source sheet.