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I opened a "Personal Budget Spreadsheet 2011" and need to change the date in the header but the cells are password protected. How can that be changed.

I don't use this particular feature, but reading the offline help (F1) under "unprotecting cells" you need the password to turn off protection.

Is the document an ods file, or some other format?

I am trying to use the personal budget template and cannot change the protected cells and cannot unprotected them because they require a password to unprotected. How do I contact the author of the template?

AZMac wrote:I opened a "Personal Budget Spreadsheet 2011" and need to change the date in the header but the cells are password protected.

Apparently the creator failed to realize that by protecting this area their spreadsheet will be obsolete the following year — not a good design, it seems to me.

Efsolack wrote:How do I contact the author of the template?

I would think that your chances of contacting the creator of a ten-year-old spreadsheet which you found on the internet are darn near zero unless they provided that information on their download page and are keeping it current. No one here will know how to contact the author.

AZMac wrote:I opened a "Personal Budget Spreadsheet 2011" …

You might have gotten a response from me several days ago if you had posted a link to the template. But you didn't, so you have to wait for a day when I have a block of free time to search for it. Those don't happen often. I presume you are asking about Personal Budget Spreadsheet.

AZMac wrote:… in the header …

The text is not in the page header but in cell A1.

I see the sheet says "instructions: See comment in this cell". You do that by right-clicking cell F2 and selecting Show Comment. Hide the comment by repeating those steps.

Efsolack wrote:I am trying to use the personal budget template and cannot change the protected cells …

Try this version, where I have unprotected cell A1 so you can change the content. I did not design this spreadsheet, and can't help you with questions about how to use it. My only involvement here is to unprotect a single cell. I don't know the sheet's password. How did I unprotect the cell without knowing that? I am a wizard and you should not ask further about such subjects.

J. R. R. Tolkien wrote:Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.

If this solved your problem please go to your first post use the Edit button and add [Solved] to the start of the subject field. Select the green checkmark icon at the same time.

[Tutorial] Ten concepts that every Calc user should know

There are other personal budgets available for open office without the cells locked.
https://templates.openoffice.org/en/node/8855