How to Remove Editors from Protected Cells or Permanently Protect Cells in Google Sheets

Question

I'm trying to permanently lock/protect certain cells on 14 different sheets (1 hidden from the workers for formula stuff). I have them all locked and no one can edit if I add them to it as an editor. But it is the template, I make copies of it for each client (and new clients) for the staff. The staff that works on the sheet and the employees are only allowed to edit certain cells for the work they do.

The problem is if I have Workbook1 with X cells locked on the different sheets, make a copy, rename it to Workbook - Client#ID, then add them employees John and Jane, who will be working on this client, as editors; they can now edit every cell, including the protected ones (they get added as editors to the protected cells too). It doesn't do this on the original, it only happens to the copy made of the template. I then have to go through all 13 sheets and remove them from the protected cells.

I'm trying to quickly remove them automatically with a script add-on that I want to turn into a button or something later...

Or is there a better way to fix this bug?

Google has an example of removing users and keeping sheet protected and I have tried to add in what I need to make it work, but it doesn't do anything when I run the test as an add-on for the spreadsheet. I open a new app script project from my spreadsheet and enter in the example code from google

   // Protect the active sheet, then remove all other users from the list of editors.
 var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.setActiveSheet(January);
 var protection = sheet.protect().setDescription('Activity Log');
 var unprotected = sheet.getRange('A2:N7');
  protection.setUnprotectedRanges([unprotected]);

 // Ensure the current user is an editor before removing others. Otherwise, if the user's edit
 // permission comes from a group, the script will throw an exception upon removing the group.
 var me = Session.getEffectiveUser();
 protection.addEditor(me);
 protection.removeEditors(protection.getEditors());
 if (protection.canDomainEdit()) {
   protection.setDomainEdit(false);
 }

Answer 1

For this you can write a script function to set the protection ranges and add editors for the sheets as well.

Please check the sample apps script code to add protection for a range in a sheet below:

function addProtection()
{

// Protect range A1:B10, then remove all other users from the list of editors.
 var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActive();
 var range = ss.getRange('A1:B10');
 var protection = range.protect().setDescription('Sample protected range');

// var me = Session.getEffectiveUser();
  // array of emails to add them as editors of the range
 protection.addEditors(['email1','email2']);
  // array of emails to remove the users from list of editors 
 protection.removeEditors(['email3','email4']);
}

Hope that helps!