Colleague managed to lock additional cells in a protected sheet, how?

[neylon]

Hi

I send out a report once a month to about 50 different people so they can fill it in and return it to me. I recently tried locking ranges of the report to try and reduce the amount of errors I was seeing in their submissions.

However I just got a report sent back with a complaint that they had somehow managed to lock some of the input cells themselves and so were unable to finish. I'm struggling to figure out how they managed to do this, as I've tried copying and pasting information from locked cells into the input cell but this doesn't seem to replicate the problem as the input cells remain editable.

The method I used to lock the ranges: Select ranges I want them to be able to edit --> Format Cells --> Protection --> untick 'locked'

Then Review --> Protect Sheet (password protected)
I have allowed them to select locked cells, select unlocked cells, format cells, sort and use autofilter

This locks the entire sheet but allows them to enter information into the desired input cells.

Does anyone have any ideas on how they managed to lock these input cells? any help would be appreciated so I can try and avoid this happening in the future

Thank you

 

[DRSteele]

I have one suggestion. Your colleaugue could have used password hacker software to discover your password, then he un-protected the worksheet, locked the cells of interest, re-enabled protection and sent it back to you with a lie about why he couldn't get the job done punctually.