possible to protect cells/columns in w/sheet but still let user to cut/clear contents

Apologies for the long explanation, but trying to find a better way of doing this:

We send out excel templates to be used to make bonus recommendations.
We send out one file per business, but that business may then need to split the listed employees down further to send on to direct managers/countries etc.
At the moment the file contains one sheet with all the employees listed but fully protected. This is because that sheet then drives a summary sheet and we don't want them messing with any of the formulas. There is then a copy of the protected sheet that is unprotected so that they can split it down further as they need to. The protected sheet then has lookups based on the employee ID to pull across the recommendations they enter in the unprotected sheet so they don't have to do it manually.
From my side it's not a big deal but for the businesses it's probably a nightmare....they can cut the unprotected sheet down but obviously then the protected sheet still displays all the data. They can remove the protected sheet in their cut down versions and just keep it in a master file, but then they still have to consolidate all their sub files back together into one to feed the summary information and submit back to me.
Is there a cleaner way of doing this in one sheet so that my formulas are protected, but they can still cut it down if they need to...maybe just filter to show what they need and prevent it from them being unfiltered??

Some of our users are on Excel 2007 but a lot are still on 2003.

Appreciate any ideas.

Thanks