Can you disable selection for specific cells or columns in KendoUI Grid?

Question

The multi-select seems pretty good in KendoUI Grid, but it doesn't appear to support row headers or excluding ranges.

e.g. I want to not be able to select the highlighted cells shown below (e.g. I want to turn them into row headers):

Answer in JQuery/Javascript or server-side C# Razor syntax preferred.

Update based on answer below:

Based on lgorrious' suggestion below, I added this to the KendoGrid options:

dataBound: function() {
    $('#grid tr td:first-child').addClass('k-group-cell');
},

which does the trick by fooling the grid into ignoring the first column (thinking it is a grouping level cell in a hierarchical grid).

I could not use the answer as-is as I am using a dataSource for the columns as they vary dynamically, but it lead me straight to a simple solution

Answer 1

This is a bit of a quirky work around, but I found this line in the grid's source code:

SELECTION_CELL_SELECTOR = "tbody>tr:not(.k-grouping-row):not(.k-detail-row):not(.k-group-footer) > td:not(.k-group-cell):not(.k-hierarchy-cell)"

td with class k-group-cell will not be selected.

With that, just add the attribute class = "k-group-cell" to the column that you don't want to be selected.

@(Html.Kendo().Grid<Employee>()    
.Name("Grid")
.Columns(columns =>
{
    columns.Bound(p => p.Department).HtmlAttributes(new { @class = "k-group-cell" }); //Add class to HtmlAttributes, on the column you don't want to be selected.
    columns.Bound(p => p.EmployeeId);
        columns.Bound(p => p.Name);
    })
    .Pageable()
    .Sortable()
    .Filterable()
    .Selectable(x => x.Mode(GridSelectionMode.Multiple).Type(GridSelectionType.Cell))
    .DataSource(dataSource => dataSource
            .Ajax()
            .PageSize(5)
            .Read(read => read.Action("GetEmployees", "Home"))
    )
)

One more java script example:

<div id="grid" style="width: 400px;"></div>
<script type="text/javascript">
    $(document).ready(function () {
        var grid = $("#grid").kendoGrid({
            columns: [
                  {
                      field: "Department",
                      title: "Department",
                      attributes: {
                          "class": "k-group-cell" //Same idea with the class attribute
                      }
                  }, {
                      field: "Name",
                      title: "Full Name"
                  }, {
                      field: "EmployeeId",
                      title: "Employee ID"
                  }
              ],
            dataSource: {
                data: [
                      {
                          EmployeeId: 0,
                          Name: "Joe Mintot",
                          Department: "Finance"
                      }, {
                          EmployeeId: 1,
                          Name: "Jane Smith",
                          Department: "IT"
                      }
                  ],
                schema: {
                    model: {
                        id: "EmployeeId",
                        fields: {
                            EmployeeId: { type: "number" },
                            Name: { type: "string" },
                            Department: { type: "string" }
                        }
                    }
                },
                pageSize: 10
            },
            selectable: "multiple cell",
            scrollable: {
                virtual: true
            },
            pageable: true
        }).data("kendoGrid");
    });
</script>