How to protect the Excel document you store your passwords in

How to password protect an Excel file

Once you create your Excel spreadsheet with your logins and passwords, we HIGHLY recommend password protecting the document. There are a few different options for password protection, you can password protect the document for viewing, editing, and/or track changes. If this document will be used by more than one person, we recommend tracking changes so you can tell when a password and/or login is changed. The more you protect this document, the better off you are. The following will be some steps to password protect an Excel document on a Mac with Microsoft Office 2011, and then we will post the Windows Microsoft 2013 steps. For the most part these steps are the same.

First open Excel and format the document the way you want. For our purposes the main information we want to capture is the login website, username and password. You can always customize this to better fit your needs, by adding notes or links to sites.
Mac Excel doc
Once we have some information in the sheet, we want to password protect the document. To do this, click File and a dropdown will pop up, select “Passwords”.

Mac Excel File pop up

You will now see a pop up with sections for a password to open the file and a password to modify the file. As previously stated, we recommend using both. You can also click “Read-only recommended” if you would like to have the document suggest it be opened in read-only mode (this is not required). These 2 password do not have to be the same and we recommend they not be the same, in case you want someone to be able to view the document, but not change the contents.
Mac Excel File password pop up 2
After you enter the passwords and click “OK”, you will have to verify the password you entered for each.
Mac Excel File password pop up 3
After verifying the password, you will have to enter it to see the document again.

Mac Excel File password pop up 4

If you entered a “Modify” password, you will have to enter that again. The pop up will also show you the person who has protected the document.

Mac Excel File password pop up 5

Now your document is protected and you can rest easy. For how to do this in Windows using Microsoft Office 2013, continue reading.
The steps for completing this process in Windows are fairly similar.
Again, you will want to create your Excel spreadsheet with the information for your logins, usernames and passwords.

Windows Excel doc

Now to password protect this document you will click File, then click Protect Workbook and choose “Encrypt with Password”.

Windows Excel file pop up

You will now get a pop up to enter the password.

Windows Excel password pop up

After clicking OK, you will get another pop up to confirm the password.
Windows Excel password pop up 2

Now you will have to enter the password to view the document.

Windows Excel password pop up 3

As you saw, there are a few more protection options with Windows. You can restrict access to certain worksheets, so you can create a family document and everyone could have their own password-protected sheet.

Now you have the basic information to secure your passwords, in the next couple days we will be showing you have to put this document in the cloud so it is accessible from any network connected device.

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