We are happy to announce the release of one of the most awaited features in Zoho Sheet. ​You can now lock the cells that you wish to keep ​secure. Once you are done with editing cells, you can lock them so that they won't be modified anymore. We believe that this feature will be a great addition to our existing set of collaboration features and is intended to improve your collaboration experience. You can access this new feature Lock from Data tab.

Apart from being able to lock individual cell ranges, ​you can also lock rows and columns or even entire sheets to keep them from being modified making them immune to edits.   You can lock them to specific collaborators depending upon the level of access that you wish to provide to that collaborator. Cell ranges and sheets can also be locked at group and organizational levels if your document requires collaboration with a larger group. It is even possible to lock specific cells for public documents shared with Read/Write access.

Lock Cells offer you the ability to allow only specific collaborators to edit cell ranges and sheets that you want. Another feature of Zoho Sheet, Audit Trail, lets you verify the edit history of a particular cell range or actions done over a sheet. Combined together, these features offer you a fine-grained control over the document letting you manage all the edits made in the document and knowing which collaborator made what change.

In the scenario illustrated, a travel expense spreadsheet is shared. It consists of various expenses incurred during the trip and is shared with members who undertook the trip. Using the Lock feature, you can provide access to a member only to his or her relevant cell ranges to be edited. You can restrict access to specific cell ranges like the expenses of other members and the total amount from collaborators whom you would prefer not edit those ranges. The columns pertaining to a specific collaborator can be edited only by him or her.

You can manage your lock settings from "Manage Lock Settings" menu available in the Data Tab. You can use this menu to control all the locked ranges and sheets and change settings to your collaborators according to your needs. The specific cell ranges and their permissions can be controlled and modified for various collaborators using Manage Lock Settings.

You can also choose to highlight the cells or sheets that have been locked to get a visual assessment ​of locked cell ranges and sheets using Highlight Locks option. ​This feature will be helpful to know which cell ranges have been locked to other collaborators as well in a spreadsheet. You can also click the Lock icon present in the corner of the cell range while using this feature to identify the collaborators for whom that range has been locked.

We hope this new feature will help you collaborate better and keep your cell ranges secure.

Do write to us at support@zohosheet.com to let us know your feedback. ​We hope that you can collaborate and work better using our new feature.