Can I protect a sheet but allow text formatting (but only in certain unlocked cells)?

Hi everyone,

I have been tasked with updating a documentation status tracking spreadsheet. Most of what was asked for, I have managed to do. However, I've now been asked if it's possible to allow users to be able to format text and / or cell colour in one particular column.

Protecting the sheet with the "Allow users to format cells" option ticked seems to allow users to format any cell, not just unlocked cells. I don't really want to prevent users from selecting locked cells as it's sometimes useful to be able to copy any paste data from the locked cells into other documents (data such as project number, name etc.).

And to add a further level of complexity, there are quite a few columns where users can / need to enter data... but it's only ONE of these columns that we want to allow users to edit the formatting in.

My initial impression is that this isn't possible, can anyone prove me wrong?

Hi noboffinme,

I know how to lock / unlock ranges of cells. What I need to do is allow users to be able to edit the cell formatting within only a subset of the unlocked cells.

e.g.

Columns A -> D are locked & columns E -> G are unlocked

We want to allow users to only be able to edit the cell formatting in column G (e.g. to be able to change the text to red to highlight an urgent issue)