Every shared Google Sheet accumulates the same scar tissue: a quarterly plan where someone typed over the tax formula, a price list where a well-meaning colleague "fixed" a lookup, a column of numbers that stopped adding up in March and nobody knows why. If several people can edit a Sheet, sooner or later one of them edits the wrong cell. Learning how to lock cells in Google Sheets is the standard cure, and it works well, as long as you are clear about what it protects. Protection controls who can edit a cell. It says nothing about who can see it, and that second gap is where most sharing accidents actually happen.
How to lock cells in Google Sheets
Google calls the feature protected ranges, and it lives in the Data menu:
- Select the cells you want to lock.
- Open Data > Protect sheets and ranges. A sidebar opens on the right.
- Click Add a sheet or range. Your selection is prefilled; add a short description like "tax rates, do not touch" so future editors know why it is locked.
- Click Set permissions and choose who may edit the range: only you, or a custom list of people.
In practice, locking individual ranges is often the wrong way around. If a Sheet is mostly formulas with a handful of input cells, protect the whole sheet instead: in the same sidebar, switch to the Sheet tab, pick the sheet, and tick Except certain cells. Then list the input cells that should stay editable. Everything else is locked in one pass, including cells you add later, and you never have to remember which formula ranges you meant to cover. Google's own documentation on protecting sheets and ranges covers the remaining details, such as copying permissions from another range.
Show a warning vs. restrict who can edit
The permissions dialog offers two modes, and they do very different jobs. Restrict who can edit this range is a real lock: anyone not on the list gets a "You're trying to edit a protected cell" error and their change is rejected. Show a warning when editing this range is only a speed bump. Any editor can still change the cell; they just have to click OK in a confirmation dialog first.
The warning mode sounds weaker, but for a team of trusted editors it is frequently the right choice. Most damage to shared Sheets is accidental, a sort applied to half a table or a value typed into a formula cell, and a dialog that says "are you sure?" stops nearly all of it without making anyone file a request to change a number. Use the restrict mode for the cells where even a deliberate edit should go through you: rates, thresholds, anything that feeds reporting.
One thing neither mode changes: protection only constrains people who have edit access to the file in the first place. Someone you shared the Sheet with as a viewer could never edit anything, protected or not.
What locked cells don't protect: viewing and copying
Here is the limit that surprises people. A protected range is read-only, not hidden. Anyone with access to the file, including viewers, can click a locked cell and read its formula in the formula bar, browse every tab, and study values you would rather keep internal. Lock all you want; the margin calculation is still right there.
Copying goes further. File > Make a copy gives any user their own copy of the spreadsheet, and they own that copy, so your protections no longer bind them. Google lets you switch off the download, print, and copy options for viewers and commenters in the share dialog's settings, but that toggle does not apply to editors, and nothing stops anyone from reading values off the screen. Hidden tabs are not a fix either: in a copy, the new owner can simply unhide them. Excel behaves the same way, which we took apart in Hide a Sheet in Excel: Why Hidden Isn't Private.
Protected ranges, then, are a guard rail against unwanted edits by people who belong in the file, not a confidentiality boundary. If your Sheet contains formulas, prices, or data the audience should not see, no combination of locking and hiding gets you there, because everyone you share with gets the whole spreadsheet.
Share only what people need: turn the Sheet into an app
The alternative is to stop sharing the spreadsheet and share an interface instead. With airrange you import your Google Sheet and build a small web app on top of it: you decide which cells become inputs and which results are displayed, and that selection is all the recipient ever gets.
The import is a one-time conversion: set the Sheet to "Anyone with the link", paste the link, and airrange creates a hosted workbook where your formulas keep calculating, including newer functions like UNIQUE, XLOOKUP, and FILTER. If the data should stay linked to Google instead, a live connection on the Plus plan adds your Google worksheets as read-only synced tabs you refresh with a click, and published apps use the fresh numbers on their next load without republishing.
For the people you share with, the difference is structural rather than cosmetic. A share link opens the app in the browser, on desktop or phone, with no account needed for public links; restricted links ask for an email address and a 6-digit passcode. Recipients see the inputs and results you designed, and nothing else. The formulas are not delivered to their browser at all, so there is no formula bar to read, no tabs to browse, and no "Make a copy" that walks off with your logic. You can also hand different people different links, an editable one for the team entering data and a read-only one for everyone else, and put a password or expiry date on any of them. Granular sharing is the same idea stated as a rule: share the range, not the workbook.
If you want to see the build end to end, From Google Sheet to Web App in an Afternoon walks through importing a Sheet and designing the interface step by step.
Which tool for which job
For a team that lives in the same Sheet and simply keeps tripping over formulas, protected ranges are the right tool: free, built in, set up in two minutes. Lock the sheet, except the input cells, use warnings for trusted editors and hard restrictions for the numbers that matter, and most spreadsheet accidents disappear.
Reach for an app the moment your audience extends beyond that circle, to clients, another department, or anyone who should type into three cells without reading the other thirty columns. Locked cells cannot draw that line, because sharing the file always means sharing all of it. An app draws the line for you: people get what they need, and the spreadsheet stays yours.