About tracking changes

Microsoft Excel can maintain and display information about how a worksheet was changed.

Change tracking logs details about workbook changes each time you save a workbook. You can use this history to understand what changes were made, and to accept or reject revisions.

This capability is particularly useful when several users edit a workbook. It's also useful when you submit a workbook to reviewers for comments, and then want to merge input into one copy, selecting which changes and comments to keep.

When you view the change history, either directly on the worksheet or on a separate History worksheet, you see who made each change, what type of change was made, when it was made, what cells were affected, and what data was added or deleted.

Change tracking is available only in shared workbooks. In fact, when you turn on change tracking, the workbook automatically becomes a shared workbook, although you don't have to store the workbook where others can access it.

Change tracking differs from undo and backup Unlike the Undo button, you can't use the change history to back out changes. However, the history includes a record of any deleted data, so that you can copy lost data from the History worksheet back to the original cells. Because change tracking isn't designed to help you return to earlier versions of a workbook, you should continue to back up workbooks that have change tracking in effect.

Some types of changes aren't tracked Changes you make to cell contents are tracked, but other changes, including formatting changes, are not. Some Excel features are unavailable in shared workbooks and therefore aren't tracked.

History is kept only for a set interval When you turn on change tracking, the history is kept for 30 days. This limit keeps workbook size manageable. You can increase or decrease the number of days of history to keep. If you want to keep the history indefinitely, you can specify a large number of days, or you can make periodic copies of the history information.

How history gets deleted Excel determines what history is kept by counting back from the current date. Each time you close the workbook, Excel erases any part of the change history that is older than the number of days in effect the last time the workbook was saved.

For example, if you're keeping 30 days of change history, and you open a workbook for the first time in two months, you'll be able to view the history from two months ago. However, when you close this workbook, the history from 31 to 60 days ago is deleted.

If you turn off change tracking or stop sharing the workbook, all change history is permanently deleted.

Excel provides the following ways to access and use the stored change history.

Highlight onscreen Excel can outline changed areas in a different color for each user and display the basic details as a comment when you rest the pointer over each changed cell. Onscreen highlighting is useful when a workbook has only a few changes, or you want to see at a glance what's changed.
History worksheet Excel can display a separate worksheet that provides full details in list form, so that you can filter to find changes of interest and print the information. This History worksheet is useful when a workbook has lots of changes, or you want to investigate what happened in a series of changes.
Review changes Excel can step you through the changes in sequence using a dialog box that lets you decide whether to accept or reject each change. This method is useful when you're evaluating and working with comments from others.