shg - thank you for your reply, I have started looking at tutorials to learn about vba but in the meantime the cells I wish to be open are G16 and O16, if a "Y" is entered in G16 then I need G27, G31, G33 and G36 to unlock, each one unlocking the next if necessary. for O16 I need O21, O23, O27, O31, O33 and O36 to unlock. Is this possible?