Goodwill Community Foundation creating
opportunities for a better life
there are a couple things you can do to
prep your workbook before you send it
out for example first you might want to
run a spellcheck then you can finalize
the file and even protect it to keep
other people from making any more
changes to run a spellcheck go to the
review tab then click the spelling
command a dialog box will appear where
you can type the correct spelling
yourself or you can choose one of the
suggestions then click Change now
spellcheck isn't perfect sometimes it'll
say a word is spelled wrong when it
isn't like people's names business names
and other proper nouns if that happens
you can ignore the error or you can
click Add to dictionary this will save
the word so it never comes up as a
spelling mistake again and it looks like
that's it now that we're done with our
spellcheck we can move on to the next
step finalizing the file itself you'll
find everything you need in the
backstage view under inspect workbook
this feature can help you remove any
personal info that may be hidden in the
workbooks file data
it'll also check for things that you
generally don't want in the final draft
for example 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
before you continue 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 info 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
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 our 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 this 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 ok 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
if they do need to make changes they can
click the button that says edit anyway
in short this option doesn't provide any
actual security however it's a good way
to keep people from changing or deleting
something by accident
now you know some ways to finalize and
also protect your workbook before
sending it out to others
you