[ACCEPTED]-How to hide certain columns for a user?-google-sheets

Accepted answer
Score: 30

After some research and trying various different 16 options, I was finally able to achieve what 15 I want using the importrange function.

At first, I 14 tried using a combination of hide columns 13 & protect range, but this wouldn't work 12 because a simple copy & paste would 11 reveal the contents of the hidden columns.

Solution: The 10 'master' spreadsheet does not have any sensitive 9 column data and can be shared with everyone 8 in the organization... I then ADD the sensitive 7 data to a new spreadsheet and use importrange 6 to grab contents from the 'master'. (Previously 5 I had the roles reversed, but this didn't 4 work)


You may want to add unique keys per 3 row entry so that sorting etc won't mess 2 things up when you zip-up the sensitive 1 data and the 'master' data.

Score: 10

I came here looking for a way to share only 15 certain columns of a spreadsheet with a 14 customer, but not all.

As noted in the other 13 answer, using =IMPORTRANGE works well, but a clever 12 customer could simply edit the function 11 and see the other columns.

My solution was 10 to first create a 'proxy' spreadsheet that 9 imported only the columns I want the customer 8 to see. This proxy spreadsheet is not shared.

Then, I 7 created another spreadsheet that imported the columns 6 from the proxy, and shared that spreadsheet 5 with the customer. This way, even with edit 4 privileges, it's impossible for him to see 3 anything that isn't on the proxy spreadsheet.

A 2 bit clunky to be sure, but it worked perfectly 1 for my situation.

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