How to track changes in Excel, step by step

Tracking changes in current Excel means two features, and neither is called Track Changes. Show Changes, on the Review tab, lists recent edits in a cloud-saved workbook: who changed which cell, when, and what the previous value was. Version history opens and restores earlier saved versions of the whole file. The old Track Changes feature still exists but is hidden. This guide gives the exact clicks for all three.

How do I turn on Show Changes in Excel?

There is nothing to turn on. Show Changes records edits automatically for workbooks that live in the cloud; you just open the pane:

1. Save the workbook to OneDrive or SharePoint. Show Changes belongs to Excel’s co-authoring workflow, which starts with a workbook uploaded to OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, or a SharePoint Online library. A file on your desktop or a network share is outside that workflow.
2. Open the workbook and go to the Review tab.
3. Select Show Changes.

The Changes pane opens on the right. Each entry records who changed what, where, and when, along with the previous value of the cell, so a bad edit can be reverted quickly. In practice an entry reads along the lines of:

To narrow the list, use the filter at the top of the pane: select Range and type a range or a single cell, and the pane shows only the edits that touched it (Sheet works the same way for one worksheet). Selecting cells on the sheet filters the pane too, which is the fastest way to ask “who touched this number”.

What Show Changes does not record

The limits matter as much as the feature, and Microsoft’s current support pages document each one:

• The history is shallow. Microsoft’s stated ceiling is that “you can see past changes for up to 60 days”, and older edits are gone from the pane.
• Only edits from current versions of Excel are recorded: Windows desktop, Mac, iPad, iOS and Android phones, plus Excel for the web. An edit made from a one-time-purchase or older version of Excel is not tracked, and it also clears the Changes pane, so a colleague on Excel 2019 can wipe the pane’s record of everyone’s edits without leaving an entry of their own.
• Whole categories of edits are skipped. The pane does not show chart, shape, and other object edits, PivotTable operations, formatting changes, or hiding and filtering of cells and ranges.

So the pane answers “what cell values and formulas changed recently, and who changed them” inside one cloud-saved file. It is a feed, not a comparison: you cannot point it at two versions, or at two files, and ask what is different between them.

How do I see version history in Excel?

Version history is the other half of change tracking: Excel and OneDrive or SharePoint keep earlier saved versions of the file, and you can open or restore any of them. The requirement is the same as above: version history in Microsoft 365 only works for files stored in OneDrive or SharePoint.

The click path depends on your version, and it is not the File menu path most older tutorials describe:

• Excel for Microsoft 365 (Windows): click the title of your file and select Version history.
• Excel 2016, 2019, and 2021: go to File > History.
• Excel for Microsoft 365 for Mac: select the document name in the title bar, then select Browse Version History.
• Excel for the web: select File > Version History.

A pane lists the saved versions. Select one and it opens in a separate window, so you can read the old numbers next to the current ones without touching the live file.

You can also get there without opening Excel. In OneDrive, right-click the file and select Version history. In a SharePoint document library, right-click in the space between the document name and the date, then click Version history; each older version offers View, Restore, and Delete.

How do I restore a previous version of an Excel file?

From inside Excel: open version history as above, select the version you want, and with it open select Restore. From OneDrive: in the Version History pane, select the ellipses next to the version you want and click Restore.

One caution on how far back this reaches. Retention depends on where the file lives and how versioning is set up there. For OneDrive files, Microsoft’s support page puts retention at 30 days. Check what your file actually has before you build an audit process on it.

Can I still use the legacy Track Changes feature?

Yes, but Microsoft has buried it on purpose. The old Track Changes rode on Shared Workbooks, which Microsoft now describes as an older feature with many limitations, replaced by co-authoring. In newer versions of Excel the buttons are simply gone from the ribbon.

Microsoft still documents how to bring the commands back, through the Quick Access Toolbar:

1. Select File > Options > Quick Access Toolbar.
2. Open the list under Choose commands from and select All Commands.
3. Scroll down the list until you see Share Workbook (Legacy). Select it and select Add.
4. Scroll further until you see Track Changes (Legacy). Select it and select Add.
5. Select OK. (The same list also carries Protect Sharing (Legacy) and Compare and Merge Workbooks, if you want the full legacy set.)

The commands now sit on the Quick Access Toolbar. Select the Track Changes (Legacy) button you added, then Highlight Changes, to turn highlighting on; the same menu is where List changes on a new sheet lives, which writes the change log out as a worksheet you can read and keep.

Before you invest in this, read Microsoft’s own warning: “Be certain that you want to use these buttons before continuing. This feature has many limitations, and therefore we highly recommend co-authoring.” Among the things a shared workbook cannot do: creating or inserting tables, creating or changing PivotTable reports, and writing, recording, changing, viewing, or assigning macros. Whether reviving it is ever worth those trade-offs is covered in what Excel’s built-in change tracking can and cannot do.

How do I see who edited an Excel file?

Two honest answers, depending on how precise you need to be.

For per-edit attribution, Show Changes is the built-in tool. It records who made each edit, exactly where in the workbook, when, and what they changed. That is a real edit history at the cell level, within the pane’s limits above: cloud-saved files, up to 60 days, and no entries from one-time-purchase versions of Excel.

Version history is organized around saved versions of the file, not around people. It tells you the file changed and lets you open or restore any saved version, which is often enough to bracket when something happened. It is not built to tell you who changed a specific cell.

What if you need to see exactly what changed between two versions?

Version history restores whole versions; nothing in it shows you which cells changed between two of them. Show Changes covers recent edits in one cloud file, and stops at 60 days, at formatting, and at the file’s own boundary. The question auditors and reviewers actually ask, “what changed between the version that was signed off and the one open now”, has no built-in answer. The page on what version history does and does not show walks through that gap in detail.

The working method: open or download the two versions as separate files, then compare them side by side. A fuller walkthrough of every comparison method is in how to compare two Excel files.

The short version

For a workbook in OneDrive or SharePoint, Review > Show Changes lists the last 60 days of cell edits with names and previous values. Clicking the file title (or File > History in Excel 2016 to 2021) opens version history, where any saved version opens in a separate window and Restore brings it back. The legacy Track Changes feature survives behind File > Options > Quick Access Toolbar, with heavy limitations Microsoft itself warns about. And when the real question is what changed between two versions, none of the built-ins answer it: save both versions as files and compare them.