https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=164013
--- Comment #2 from george <[email protected]> --- (In reply to Eyal Rozenberg from comment #1) > (In reply to george from comment #0) > > Data validation is itself a form of partial protection from editing. Does it > really require a protection-of-itself? That seems a bit weird. > > Protecting the format sounds interesting. > > Could you present a compelling use-case for these kinds of protection? I think a good use case is a spreadsheet template that is distributed to many users as an input form. For example, an organization may have a template where users need to enter information such as department, language, status, date, etc. A cell for "Language" might have a data validation list containing only "English" and "French". The users should be able to edit the cell and select one of those values, but they should not be able to modify or remove the validation rule itself. The same applies to formatting. The template may have specific formatting for input cells, dates, mandatory fields, calculated fields, and so on. Users need to edit the data, but they should not accidentally change the formatting or the rules that define how the data should be entered. A common way this breaks is when a user pastes content from another source – the paste operation overwrites both the value and the validation rule/formatting. This happens unintentionally all the time and is the main reason why simple "unprotected cells" are not sufficient. I think this is an important distinction: protecting the cell content and protecting the rules governing the cell are two different things. Data validation restricts what the user can enter, but it does not protect the validation rule itself. A user who is allowed to edit a cell can potentially change or remove its validation, which defeats the purpose of having a controlled input field in the first place. A practical scenario would be a template created once and then used by dozens or hundreds of people. The template designer needs to retain control over the structure, formatting, formulas and validation rules, while the end users need to be able to edit only the intended input cells. This is also relevant for Excel compatibility. In organizations using Microsoft 365 and Excel online, this kind of protected template is quite common. When such a file is downloaded as XLSX and subsequently edited in LibreOffice Calc, preserving this distinction between editable data and protected cell configuration becomes important. So the desired behavior is not simply "make the cell read-only". It is: Users can edit the value of the cell, but cannot modify the formatting or the data validation rule associated with that cell. I believe this would make the feature useful not only for security, but also for preventing accidental changes and maintaining the integrity of spreadsheet-based forms and templates. -- You are receiving this mail because: You are the assignee for the bug.
