How to hide and protect sensitive data in Excel sheets?

When working with Excel sheets containing sensitive information, it is crucial to ensure the security of your data. Improper data processing can lead to information leakage, with serious consequences for individuals or organizations. This article will delve into best practices for securely handling sensitive information in Excel, including data encryption, access control, audit trails, and more. We'll also provide some practical tips and tools to help you protect your data. PHP editor Xinyi recommends that you read the following content carefully to understand how to safely handle sensitive information in Excel and protect your data from unauthorized access and the risk of data leakage.

In order to ensure the security of this data, we can protect the data by hiding cells, rows and columns, and setting passwords to protect the worksheet. Let’s take a look below!

1. Hidden data:

If you want sensitive data not to be seen, you can use the following two hiding methods.

1. Hide cells

First, select the cells you want to hide, as shown in the picture, then right-click the mouse and select "Format Cells" in the list ";

After the dialog box pops up, in the "Number" tab, select "Custom", then in the "Type" box, enter three semicolons ";;;", and finally click "OK" to complete the setting. .

You can see that the originally selected cell becomes a blank cell and the data inside is hidden.

Cancel method:

If you no longer need to hide the data, you only need to follow the setting process to bring up the "Format Cells" dialog box, then delete the three semicolons ";;;" originally added, and then click "OK" , you can unhide it.

2. Hide rows and columns

Select the row or column that needs to be hidden, such as column C as shown in the picture, then right-click the mouse and select "Hide" in the list "That's it;

You can see that the originally selected column C has been hidden.

It should be noted that the method of hiding cells is to hide the data, and the cells are still there, but they become blank cells; the method of hiding columns or rows is to hide both the data and the cells.

Cancel method:

If you no longer need to hide it, you only need to select one of the columns or rows, then right-click the mouse and select "Unhide" in the list.

2. Protect sensitive data through passwords

Sensitive data can be protected by hiding the data, but as long as you unhide it, you can see the data. If you want to get more efficient Protection method, we can set password protection after hiding the data, so that only the password can be used to unhide the settings.

Setting method:

After setting the hidden data in Excel, click "Protect Worksheet" in the "Review" list of the menu tab;

After opening the "Protect Worksheet" dialog box, check "Protect worksheet and locked cell contents", then enter the password you want to set in the password field, and then click "OK" to set it.

After the setting is completed, you can see that the relevant options for unhiding data have turned gray and cannot be clicked, which means that they cannot be unhidden.

Cancellation method:

If you want to cancel the restriction protection later, you need to pass a password to do so.

First, click "Unprotect Worksheet" in the "Review" list of the menu tab. After the dialog box pops up, enter the originally set password in the password field, and click "OK" to remove the restriction.

It should be noted that after setting the "restriction password" in Excel, you must remember or protect it well, because without the password, you cannot lift the restrictions in Excel.

In this case, we need the help of other tools.

For examplePepsi Niu Excel Password Recovery Tool can directly remove Excel’s “restricted password” without a password.

Just click on the [Unrestriction] module in the tool, and then import the Excel table into the tool to lift it with one click.

That’s it for today’s sharing, I hope it will be helpful to everyone!

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