Can sharepoint enforce section level authorizations in an uploaded office document?

Question

Take for e.g. an excel document. There may be a set of rows in the excel assigned to a person/team to work on. Only that person or team is authorized to edit those rows in the excel sheet.

Does sharepoint provide something native (or in-built) to handle such a requirement? Or how can we enforce such a requirement (by incorporating other MS technologies)?

Answer 1

SharePoint doesn't have anything to handle part document security. It can only handle who has access to the file.

But section level protection is build into Excel itself.

To make part of an Excel sheet only editable by a group of people do the following:

1. Unlock all cells
   1.1 Select all cells in the sheet (click top left corner)
   1.2 Open the Format Cells dialog
   1.3 Click the Protection tab
   1.4 Uncheck the Locked Check box
   1.5 Click OK
2. Lock the cells that should be protected
   2.1 Select all cells that should be protected at some level
   2.2 Open the Format Cells dialog
   2.3 Click the Protection tab
   2.4 Check the Locked Check box
   2.5 Click OK
3. Specify protected ranges that can be edited by certain users
   3.1 Select the protected cells that certain users should be able to edit
   3.2 Select the Review Tab
   3.3 Click Allow Users to Edit Ranges
   3.4 Click New...
   3.5 Click Permissions...
   3.6 Click Add...
   3.7 Select Users
   3.8 OK back to Permissions
   3.9 OK back to New Range
   3.10 OK back to Allow Users to Edit Ranges
   3.11 OK back to sheet
4. Protect Sheet
   4.1 On the Review tab click Protect Sheet
   4.2 Specify a password and select actions allowed by all users

That's it