I'm not sure this is the right place to ask this, so if not could you please link to somewhere else I can ask this?

here it goes: I've got an excel spreadsheet that I'm send my users to fill in data and I would like to protect most of the sheet beside the places where they should fill in the missing details.

I've protected the document and allow editing permission to some of the cells. problem is I've got several combo boxes that I would like the users to choose items from, and when I protect the document any selection from the combo boxes becomes invalid with a "data read only" error.

I've tried to allow the cells from which the comboboxes get their input, but it stays the same problem.

question is how can I protect the document and allow selecting from combo boxes?