Protecting Your Worksheets

When distributing worksheets, you may wish to restrict user access to most regions. Rather than locking an area, you may opt instead to use worksheet protection.

Worksheet protection is a two-step process:

  1. You can opt to enable or disable protection for an individual region from the Protect tab of the Properties dialog. Regions can still be edited until you activate protection for the worksheet.
  2. You can activate or deactivate protection from the Protect Worksheet dialog, presented when you click Tools > Protect Worksheet. Regions which were excluded from protection can still be edited once you enable protection at the worksheet level.

By default, Mathcad enables protection for every region created in an unprotected worksheet, unless you explicitly disable protection on a region.

Mathcad provides three levels of worksheet protection for you to use, depending upon your needs:

File

With file protection enabled, the worksheet can only be saved in one of the following formats:

The intent of file protection is to prevent other users from opening the worksheet in a text editor and editing its contents by hand. The allowed file formats are either binary (XMCDZ, MCD) or output-only (RTF, HTML). With file protection enabled, you can only alter the contents of a worksheet from Mathcad. You can create, edit, and delete regions within the worksheet with no restrictions.

Content

Includes file protection. Existing regions cannot be changed. New regions can be created and protected regions can be copied.

Use content protection to prevent changes to protected content while allowing others to add their own content. Note that added content can change the result of a protected expression.

Editing

Includes content protection. Protected regions cannot be edited or copied. No new regions can be created in the worksheet.

Use edit-level protection to prevent any changes to the worksheet, except those made to unprotected regions. Edit-level protection is particularly useful for creating calculation templates for other Mathcad users, with edits restricted to essential variables.

To Protect Your Worksheet

Choose Protect Worksheet from the Tools menu. To disable worksheet protection, choose Unprotect Worksheet from the same menu.

You also have the option to set a password, to prevent unauthorized users from disabling protection on your worksheet. Passwords provide a secondary level or protection from accidental editing by preventing users from accidentally disabling protection for the worksheet. Use of a password should not be construed as making a worksheet secure.

To disable protection for a specific region within a protected worksheet:

  1. Disable worksheet protection, if you have not done so already.
  2. Right-click on the region and choose Properties from the menu. To disable protection for an area, select one of the area boundaries. (For collapsed areas, only one boundary exists.)
  3. Deselect "Protect region from editing" on the Protect tab.
  4. Protect the worksheet.

Notes:

Tutorial: Protecting Your Worksheets

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