How do I set tab order in Excel?

If you can’t unlock the protection, then you can’t move the tabs. It’s as simple as that. That’s why Workbook Protection exists.

Now, if you would like to bypass Excel’s security and unlock every password in the program (other than VBA passwords, which I don’t think are so simple) then there are any number of downloadable macros that you could find to do that.

No I know how to take the protection off, I put it on. What I meant was when I put protection on, I want the tab to advance to the unprotected cells vertical rather than horizontal.

Can you do that in Excel 2007 without add on or getting into VBA

Ah, I misunderstood the question.

In every version of Excel that I’ve worked with, the Tab key will only move “one screen width to the right”. I don’t know if there is any way to change that.

However, you can change the behavior of the cursor after pressing the Enter key.

Under Options (sorry, I don’t have Excel 2007 to tell you an exact navigation path) you can find an option to change the “Editing Options” (in Excel 2010) to “After pressing Enter, move selection {your choice of direction, among Up, Down, Left or Right – or not move at all, which is another choice}.

Is that what you wanted?

As far as I know this is a “session” setting that won’t apply only at the Workbook or Worksheet level.

Seems like there might be visual basic properties you could set… certainly on a VB form you can set next tab.

Yes, there is that. I’ve learned how to set a region in a Worksheet macro and force the cursor to stay within that region. I’m sure it would be no trick to make one that would walk through all of the cells in a particular region in order, too.

I guess what I’d do is make one that captured the current position of the cursor in an “OnChange” event, and walk it to a specified next field / cursor / location when the change was made. But it’s certainly not a regular feature of the program.

It’s also possible (I think “still possible”) to use Excel to make an automatic form of the data cells in a region, and walk through each of those cells or fields as entries are made. (I know that was a normal / automated feature of Excel 2000, anyway, though I haven’t tried to learn it in later versions.)

I’m remembering it being a standard function in previous versions but can’t find it now. I am not school in VB so that outside of what I can do. Thank you all for the help.