Goodwill Community Foundation creating
opportunities for a better life there
are a couple of things you can do to
prepare your workbook before you send it
out for example you can finalize the
file and even protect it to keep other
people from making any more changes
you'll find everything you need in the
backstage view under inspect workbook
this feature will help you remove any
personal information that may be hidden
in the workbooks file data
it'll also check for things that you
generally don't want to include in the
final draft such as comments or
annotations that you forgot to delete
some of the changes from the inspector
can't be undone so it's a good idea to
save an extra copy of your file before
you do this when you're ready go ahead
and click check for issues choose
inspect document from the menu then
click inspect in the dialog box
the results will appear with an
exclamation mark next to anything that
might contain sensitive information in
this example it looks like there are
some hidden document properties and
personal information and also some
comments that we definitely don't want
in the final draft to remove an issue
just click the button to the right that
says remove all and Excel will take care
of the rest I'm also going to remove the
personal info the document inspector
found just because the people I'm
sharing with don't really need access to
it when you're done click the close
button
okay so a workbook has been finalized
now we can protect it to keep people
from making any further changes this
step is optional but it's a great way to
control who's allowed to view or edit
your work all you have to do is click
the protect workbook command and make a
selection from the menu some of these
options offer a high level of protection
such as encrypt with password which is
good for really important or sensitive
workbooks if you don't need that much
security though you might want to
consider one of the other options in
this case I'm going to choose mark as
Final which will just make the workbook
read-only that should discourage people
from making changes to the file and also
let them know that this is the final
draft once you make your selection click
OK to confirm
then okay again
and the setting will be applied now when
someone opens the file they'll see this
little bar at the top of the window and
they won't be able to type or delete
anything now if they do need to make
changes they can just click the button
that says edit anyway ensure this option
doesn't provide any actual security but
it's a good way to keep people from
changing or deleting something by
accident okay now you know some ways to
finalize and protect your workbook
before sending it out to others