Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

Is it possible to protect a cell in such a way that the formatting, for example background colour and border are protected. But the data, in my case simply a number is not protected, allowing it to be modified. I think this probably isnt possible but thought I would ask anyway just to be sure.

When a cell is "protected",(and the Sheet-protection is switched on) then you can not modify either the formatting properties nor the cell content in the protected cells by using the User Interface (using the keys and the mouse...).

Use the "Paste special - Unformatted text" to paste the content, and use the Cell Styles instead of the manual formatting method. then the format properties will not be overwrite by the format properties of the pasted data.

If you use Styles for the formatting of the cells, then you will able to restore all of the (accidentally modified) properties by a double click on the name of the Style).

Good answer, thanks, this helps heaps.