Inserting and Deleting Rows in a Protected Worksheet

When you protect a worksheet, Excel allows you to define what the user can do in that protected worksheet. Using the check boxes in the Protect Sheet dialog box, you can choose a wide variety of allowed actions. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Protect Sheet dialog box.

One of the actions allowed in the Protect Sheet dialog box is inserting and deleting rows and columns in a protected worksheet. This is a great feature for some types of worksheets. But there is something odd in how this feature actually works.

Let's say you create a worksheet and you protect it. In doing so, you indicate that it is OK for people to both insert and delete rows in the protected worksheet. When someone tries to insert a row in the protected worksheet, it inserts just fine. If someone tries to delete a row—even the row they just inserted—the action is not allowed; it cannot be done. What gives? You indicated in the Protect Sheet dialog that people could delete rows, but still Excel doesn't allow you to do so.

The reason seems to be tied to how Excel implements worksheet protection. Remember that protection is applied to all cells that are formatted as Locked on the Protection tab of the Format Cells dialog box. If any cell in a row you try to delete is formatted as Locked, then worksheet protection won't allow you to delete the row. If all the cells in the row have the Locked check box cleared, then the row can be successfully deleted. (See Figure 2.)

Figure 2. The Protection tab of the Format Cells dialog box.

Interestingly, the user cannot delete a row that they added because the added row inherits the cell formatting of the row above it. So, if there are any locked cells in the row above the row inserted, then the inserted row cannot be deleted as long as the worksheet is protected.

This behavior, of course, is not terribly useful for any worksheet developer that really wants people to have the ability to delete rows in a worksheet, regardless of whether cells in the rows are locked. If you are one of those people, then the only thing you can do is create a macro that does the deletion for you. The macro must accomplish the following steps:

1. Unprotect the worksheet
2. Delete the row
3. Protect the worksheet again

These three steps are relatively easy to perform, using techniques described in other issues of ExcelTips. To make the macro useful, you will probably want to add code that ensures the user isn't trying to delete rows you don't want them to delete (headings, totals, etc.).

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (10315) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Excel in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Inserting and Deleting Rows in a Protected Worksheet.