help with excel

hello everyone,

i have made a few spreadsheets in excel, my first question is, how do i protect cells that i don't want to be changed. i would like to be able to tab through the sheet and only tab to the cells i wabt information entered into. i thought i have done this befor, but i can't seems to figure out how i did it. my next question, can i make these spreadsheets into a template? and if so, how to i go about doing it. actually i have one more question in regards to the spreadsheets, can i have it automatically insert todays day in a cell?

thanks for the help
Lee