Tracking Changes

**2sence** · 2012-03-14, 09:02 PM

I need to be able to track changers that have been made to workbook that was emailed out to people.
Ex: I create the sheet - tell it that I would like it to highlight the changes made by others - I email it out to some people - they change things and send it back to me - - - - so far i cannot get excel to highlight the changes made by people before they email it back to me.

-if there is a way to do this, and I am just going about this wrong, PLEASE let me know.

Thanks!

**Ken Puls** · 2012-03-29, 06:49 AM

The change tracking features in Excel tend to make workbooks very unstable, and most experts you find will advise you to never, ever, ever turn that feature on.

Personally, I'd set up another sheet to capture data entry from other users, or possibly use a macro to record what cells were edited if you can't have them enter into a new sheet.

**Simi** · 2012-05-11, 07:18 PM

Is making the workbook a shared workbook the same thing as having the change tracking?
Is it safe to make a shared workbook, but then in the advanced settings, make sure to check the "Don't keep change history" option?

I have a workbook, that most of my vba questions have been about, that is shared. I have 1 person who constantly complains about data going missing, or not staying sorted. I use the same file everyday and don't seem to have the same issues as the other guy, not sure if I just save more often than him or what.

**Ken Puls** · 2012-05-15, 06:55 AM

Hi Simi,

I avoid shared workbooks like the plague. I've just heard of way too many problems with them, change tracking on or off.

If I need a shared environment, I create a database and use VBA code to push/pull to/from the database. In this way I can make sure that no data ever enters the system unless it is valid, and that the data is always up to date.