Google-sheets – Prevent viewing of different sheets to different users

google sheets

I've got a workbook (is that what they're called in google sheets?) with several different sheets. I need to make it so that User1 can only view and edit Sheet1, User2 can only view and edit Sheet2, etc. However, Users 3 and 4 need to be able to view and edit all sheets.

This seems like it'd be simple, but I can't seem to figure out how to go about it.

Publishing the sheet doesn't seem to allow editing, and it doesn't look like you can prevent viewing through the Protect tool.

Ultimately, I need to have several sheets that users enter data into, say Sheets1-10, and a couple of sheets that reference the data in Sheets1-10. Each of the sheets in Sheets1-10 need to be visible only to particular users.

Right now I'm headed in the direction of creating Workbooks1-10 with just the single sheet in it and a master workbook that references those, instead of just the one workbook, but this feels like it will get quite cumbersome as more users are added over time.

Best Answer

At this time it's possible to protect individual sheets from editing but it's not possible to protect them from viewing.

One workaround is to create create a spreadsheet for each user and add to that spreadsheet only the information that they should be able to view. It's worth to note that IMPORTRANGE could be useful for certain cases, in other you could require the use of Google Apps Script.