You used to be able to simply right-click on a table cell and go to Cell > Protect, and then if you wanted to reverse that you could select Cell > Unprotect. I don’t know when it changed, but now there is no longer any right-click menu options for Row, Column and Cell like there used to be. You can protect a cell by going to Table > Protect Cells in the main menu, but then there is no way to unprotect the cell if you change your mind! Great! Why was this functionality broken?
Well, for now I just downloaded OpenOffice and it worked fine in there. But this should really be fixed in LibreOffice.
In OpenOffice 4.1.5 an individual cell cannot be unprotected. The whole table in Writer can be unprotected from from within the navigator . Select and right click the required table.Select Table from the options. Here can be found the “Unprotect” option.
Hi
I do not know which version you use, but in the 5.0.4 (windows) menu Table includes Protect and Unprotect.
Regards
It is there in 4.4.1.2 but not in 5.0.2.2 on windows.
Correct. It seems to have simply been removed from the mouse menu with no option to restore this useful feature. Version 5 is disappointing as so many useful features from 4 seem to have been abandoned. Moving to version 5 is a backward step with zero benefit that I can see. Very disappointing.
Finally, after hunting around and trying all the solutions everyone has offered, to no avail, I followed the advice given by DougT:
In OpenOffice 4.1.5 an individual cell cannot be unprotected. The whole table in Writer can be unprotected from from within the navigator . Select and right click the required table.Select Table from the options. Here can be found the “Unprotect” option.
It didn’t work, because after selecting Table, I found no Unprotect option.
However, playing around with the f5 button, which I had never known about, I clicked “Sections” > Section1 > Edit and THERE I found “Wite protect”, unchecked it and Hey presto, I could Write!! … in the cell I was interested in - others remained protected.
Hope that partial solution helps others.
However, with all due respect to those who create and maintain this amazing open source tool, I really can’t help wondering why on earth it isn’t easier to Unprotect fields, especially in files imported from elsewhere that may or may not have originally been protected and in Word, where they were often created, are in fact not protected at all.