After much research i think they way you are doing this is currently the only other way, unless you invest in 3rd party software. My only suggestion would be to streamline your process by adding a Macro that will protect all sheets in your workbook at once with one click of the button, vs doing it yourself for every worksheet.
Take this Macro below and save it to your PERSONAL.xlsb file so that it will always open in the background and you can access it whenever you need.
to input the password you want change the 12345 to whatever you want the password to be. Make sure you leave the quotation marks though. This will protect all worksheets in your excel file with the click of one button.
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