How to protect & allow searching via File Explorer

[Terry Echols]

Hi All:

I need some help with something. I have our Purchases in a Workbook with a sheet for every month and a workbook for every year. I have them available in a shared drive so they are accessible to everybody on the network. I'm having a problem with locking them but still allowing them to be searched using File Explorer. I have the cells locked on every sheet and I have selected the following options:

Select locked cells
Select unlocked cells
Sort
Use AutoFilter

Here is the problem I'm having with searching:

They can open the workbook and use Ctrl+F and search the entire workbook which is working fine but they can't find by using File Explorer to find which workbook (year) the information is in. Nothing gets returned.

How can I protect the entire workbook from being edited but have them searchable using File Explorer?

Example:
We have workbooks for sales by year

I want to find the date of a purchase but don't know what year to look in.
They open File Explorer to search but nothing is found on a protected book/sheet. Ctrl+F works if the book is opened but they would have to open, then search, in every year.

I want them to be able to search using File Explorer (which works until the book/sheet is protected) to find which year the searched data is in but can't seem to get that to work.

Am I doing something wrong? Am I missing something in the locking/protecting?

I'm using Office 365 (I think) it's 2016 version.

Thanks,
Terry Echols

Please help.

 

[Warship]

Using Win7 & Excel2007, I am able to File Explorer Search contents of Protected Workbooks.
Could it be an Explorer setting? Though I cannot think of a likely culprit.

Alternatives?:
You could create a routine to search the entire set of WBs.
A simple method is to search all WBs in a particular folder.

You could restructure WBs so that Sheets containing yearly data.
Resulting of course, is a single WB to search.
Data restructure can be painful and create even more issues.

If you have multiple users accessing WBs concurrently, you will need to handle that.
The amount of data you're processing has a lot to do with the best method to implement.

Good luck - it'll get there.