How do I password protect a workbook in Excel?

[Elmer]

I used to do my personal budgets in Excel 2003 and I password protected them.
Every time I accessed the workbook I had to write the password. Now I have
the 2007 version of Excel and I don't know how to password protect my
workbooks in Excel 2007. How can I do this?

 

[Elmer]

Thank you, very helpful and answered my question.

 

[I still have trouble with passwords]

I have tried this several times and each time I get the following error:

{Microsoft Office Excel cannot access the file 'C:\Documents and
Settings\Bob\My Documents\(some random 8 character string. In this case it
was 993c7100.)' There are several possible reasons:

The file name or path does not exist.
The file is being used by another program.
The workbook you are trying to save has the same name as a currently open
workbook.}

Now, this is in the Office 2007 Student version. I did attempt to password
protect the file as an Excel 97-2003 version and had no problem protecting it
but I keep geting a nag dialog box saying that I could improve the protecting
by converting it to Excel 2007. When I do this, I get the above dialog box. I
did try using a different file name and got the same error. After several
tries, I had many of these 8 character files stored in my folder. I did
change the Sharing of the Hardrive I was saving to from Shared to unshared
but it made no difference. I also closed and then restarted Excel with the
drive unshared and same thing.

I really need the ability to protect my files. I think I should be able to
do this. It does work for 2003 .xls files but I do not want the nag dialog
box to come up each time.

Thanks for your time,

Robert Hanrahan

 

[Christine W]

Try opening the Office Button on the top left of the Excel application.
Choose Prepare, and then Encrypt document. This forces the person to enter a
password to open and view the document.