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Excel 2019 & 2016: Force “Open as Read Only” Prompt

Excel 2019 & 2016: Force “Open as Read Only” Prompt

By Mitch Bartlett 10 Comments

If you have a file that is sensitive to changes, you can force Microsoft Excel 2019, 2016, or 365 to prompt the user to open as Read Only whenever they attempt to open the file. Here’s how to enable this setting.

  1. In Excel, select “File” and click Save As.
    Excel save as
  2. Excel 2019 users, select “Browse“. Excel 2016 users select “More options…“.
    Excel 2016 More Options
  3. Choose “Tools” > “General Options” at the bottom of the window.
    Excel general options
  4. Select the check-box for “Read-only recommended“, then select “OK“.
    Excel read only recommended setting
  5. Select “Save“.
  6. If prompted, choose “Yes” to update the file with the read-only setting.

That’s it! Anybody who opens the file in Excel will now be prompted to choose “Open as Read-Only“.

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Filed Under: Office Tagged With: Excel 2016, Excel 2019, Office 365

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Karthick Ganesan says

    October 2, 2020 at 3:34 am

    Shift + Right-Click the file you want to Open as Read-Only. The context menu that appears has an option ‘Open as Read-Only’, Voila!

  2. Bill says

    December 6, 2019 at 1:03 pm

    Now the more savy users are going in and changing the budget so that their group gets more money. Because MS thinks read only is bad.

  3. jimmuh says

    October 3, 2019 at 1:57 pm

    This is how Excel has been for the every version for the last 20 years – I would like to know how to choose directly to open a file as “read only” as was the standard in earlier versions of excel. Why was this removed? Doesnt seem like an upgrade or improvement.

  4. Kamal Mohan says

    September 29, 2019 at 2:05 pm

    Hi,
    can you help me in disabling the editing option in automatically generated excel file created by a program as an output.

  5. Jennifer Woods says

    July 12, 2019 at 9:01 pm

    Great explanation; The prompt box states that the author would like you to open as ready only, but it still allows the ‘reader’ to “opt-in” and edit.

  6. Markus says

    April 21, 2019 at 6:20 pm

    Thank you for this straightforward explanation.

  7. John C. says

    January 18, 2019 at 12:49 pm

    Works the same for Excel 2013

  8. Issac says

    January 8, 2019 at 11:24 pm

    If I want to remove the pop up message how do I go about removing it,

  9. Tom Bates says

    December 10, 2018 at 1:51 pm

    Nice. Piece of cake once you know where to find it. :-)

  10. Jon says

    December 5, 2018 at 7:49 am

    THANK YOU for this simple explanation! It’s amazing how difficult it was to find this simple answer anywhere else. VERY helpful, thanks again!

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