Video: How to protect & unprotect multiple Google sheets in bulk
In this video, you'll learn one new feature our Sheets Manager introduced to Google Sheets: protect more than one Google sheet at the same time. Of course, the option to unprotect multiple Google sheets is included. Come take a look.
Video transcript: (Un)lock multiple Google sheets using Sheets Manager
If you ever tried to lock and unlock multiple Google sheets in one go, you know there's no native feature for that. Even so, today you will actually learn how to do that. This is finally possible thanks to our Sheets Manager tool.
Start Sheets Manager
Once you install and run Sheets Manager, select all those sheets you'd like to lock, and press the Protect button.
You'll see the same two options here that spreadsheets offer by default: restrict editing and show a warning:
Lock Google sheets to restrict editing
When I pick the first one, the add-on locks all selected Google sheets right away. There are no extra windows with account permissions.
So what happens if I open this file under another account?
Well, I can see these three sheets are locked. I can't run any extension from them, and I can access neither cells nor options from the menu to edit. I can leave comments though.
So, when you lock Google sheets and restrict editing using Sheets Manager, only you and the owner of the spreadsheet can edit the tabs.
Protect Google sheets to show a warning
Let's go back to the first account and protect some other sheets.
BTW, if you right-click selected tabs, you'll see the context menu with the same settings. This time, I'll go for showing a warning:
So, the add-on locks these other sheets as well. But if I try to edit any of them, I'll get a note that it's not supposed to be changed. I can cancel the changes or proceed at my own risk. The same happens for all spreadsheet collaborators.
Unlock (unprotect) Google sheets
Finally, if no protection is needed at all, you can unlock all the sheets super quick by selecting all the tabs and clicking Unprotect:
This is how you lock & unlock multiple Google sheets at once using the Sheets Manager add-on.
I'll put a link to Sheets Manager in the Google Marketplace in the description of this video so you could try it out.
Thanks for watching and see you in the next videos!
