Edit locked cell in protected shared workbook

[Acropolis]

Hi, hoping someone has some bright ideas for this...

I am wanting to put a notes section into a workbook, where notes can be added about a particular row in a worksheet. There will be lots of rows.

I want these notes to be uneditable once they have been written, so they can't be tampered with.

Previously I have done this by unprotecting, then protecting the worksheet to enter the note which is captured in VBA. However this workbook needs to be shared, which means you can't unprotect or protect a workbook either in VBA or manually.

I have tried protecting the workbook with UserInterfaceOnly:= True, and that works great until the workbook is closed and re-opened then it fails and then can't unprotect or protect the workbook.

Excel really isn't the right platform for this, as it's basically a small CRM, but unfortunately for the moment it's the only thing available and that can't change for now, so need to try and find a way to make it work, any idea's?

Thanks

 

[Lindaad]

Copy and paste to cancel cell protection.
Click cell A1>Shift + Ctrl + End to select all content > Ctrl + C Copy > Create a new Excel file > Ctrl + V to paste the copied content.
This will successfully unprotection Excel.