Microsoft Excel is one of those programs that can never be absent from most PCs around the world today. It is part of the Office suite and has all kinds of functions that help us in working with numerical data, including some security
This is the case of the Excel read-only mode that we will talk about next.
Something that we must bear in mind is that on many occasions here we work with especially sensitive documents or spreadsheets. You have to know that Excel is a program suitable for working in both home and professional environments. That is why here we can work with numbers that are part of our home accounting, or the accounts of an entire company.
Be that as it may on many occasions, as we tell you, we do not want these to be modified, or even seen, by anyone who does not have permission. In fact, Excel has a read-only function in Excel that helps us in all this, something that we are going to try to solve now. To give you an idea of what we are really talking about, surely on some occasion we have received an Excel file from a contact by mail.
However, when we open it we realize that we cannot edit it due to a strange read-only notification. Therefore, if we need to make modifications of any kind to its content, we will see that the program does not allow us. But we must also know that there are several ways to avoid this problem, something that we will talk about later. Specifically, we are going to talk to you about several ways with which you can skip this restriction and thus edit those Excel sheets. At first the read-only mode is applied so that the receiver can only see the file, but without making any changes to it.
Use the edit button to skip the reading mode
Therefore, in the usual case that we want to edit or make changes in the Excel document, we can do it, as we will see below. In the event that we want to edit the spreadsheet, initially the first thing we will do is open it from Microsoft's own program, Excel.
Well, once it is opened, we will find the message that tells us that the document is read-only or Protected View. At this point, the user is simply required to click a button that says Edit Anyway. Once this is done, the user will be able to make changes to the document in the way they deem appropriate. Very simple and direct. While this may not work all the time, it is the first thing to try. It may not work if it is password protected.
Save the file again
Another interesting way to fix the read-only problem that we are talking about in these lines, is just as simple. It involves saving the file again just by clicking the Save As button. Keep in mind that the system that we normally use when saving a file from Save is not valid here. In this specific case we will have to go to the File menu and opt for the aforementioned Save as.
Then we will only have to choose the disk location where we want to save the new Excel document, which is actually the same. Therefore, as you can imagine, to solve this problem that we discussed, now we just have to open the Excel document just saved. From there we should already have the possibility to edit it and make any changes. It should be mentioned that this also works if the program gives us an error saying that the Excel file is blocked.
Remove read-only recommendation in Excel
Assuming that the entire document is locked and requires a password to unlock and edit it, let's see what we can do. At this point, what is recommended when trying to open the document is that we do it read-only. Therefore we open it and go to the File menu of the main interface of the program. Here, as we also saw before, we choose the Save as option, but in this specific case we will have to click on the More options button. Next, in the new window that appears on the screen, we find the Tools / General options entry located at the bottom of it.
Therefore another small window will appear in which we see the option to add a password. But what interests us here to be able to open the file later is to uncheck the Read-only recommended box.
Date update on 2021-05-28. Date published on 2021-05-28. Category: Computer class Author: Oscar olg Fuente: softzone