How to Use Track Changes in Excel: Beginner’s Guide

If you’re working on a collaborative project in Excel, keeping track of all the changes made can be difficult. Luckily, Excel has a built-in feature called Track Changes that makes it easy to manage and review changes made to a document. In this blog post, we’ll explore how to use Track Changes in Excel and its benefits.

Benefits of using Track Changes:

Track Changes can help you:

• Keep track of changes made by collaborators
• Review and accept or reject changes easily
• Collaborate more effectively
• Improve document management

Enabling Track Changes:

Before you can use Track Changes, you need to enable it.

Here’s how:

1. Access the ‘Review’ tab and see if the command is already on the Ribbon menu. If it isn’t, you can add it.
2. Right-click on the ‘Review’ tab, then select ‘Customize the Ribbon’.
3. In the pop-up window, click on the ‘Review’ pane in the right-hand side and select ‘New Group’.
4. Right-click on this new group and rename it as ‘Track Changes’.
5. From the list on the left, select the command ‘Track Changes (Legacy)’ and click ‘Add’. This command has now been added to the ‘Review’ tab in the new group.
6. Click on the ‘Review’ tab and select ‘Highlight Changes’ and make sure the ‘Track Changes while editing’ option is selected.

Making Changes:

Once you’ve enabled Track Changes, you can start making changes to the document. Here’s how:

• Make the changes to the document.
• Save the document and close it.

Reviewing Changes:

After changes have been made, you’ll need to review them and decide which ones to accept or reject.

Here’s how:

1. Re-open the document.
2. Click on the ‘Review’ tab and select ‘Track Changes’.
3. Select ‘Highlight Changes’ to see the changes that were made.
4. To accept or reject changes, select ‘Accept/Reject Changes’ from the ‘Track Changes’ menu.

Managing Changes:

Managing changes with the Track Changes feature is simple.

Here’s how:

1. To create a separate spreadsheet with the record of all changes, click on ‘Track Changes’ and select ‘List changes on a new sheet’.
   • Excel will automatically generate this sheet.
2. To save and share the document with changes, simply save the document as you normally would.

Collaborating with Track Changes:

Collaborating with others using Track Changes is easy.

Here are some tips for effective collaboration:

• Communicate with your collaborators to ensure everyone is on the same page.
• Use comments to provide feedback and suggestions.
• Always review and accept or reject changes promptly.

YouTube Video:

Check out our YouTube video demonstration of using Track Changes in Excel for a visual guide.

Conclusion:

Using Track Changes in Excel can improve document collaboration and management. By enabling Track Changes, making changes, reviewing changes, managing changes, and collaborating effectively, you’ll be able to work more efficiently with your team.

Next Steps:

To further improve collaboration and document management in Excel, consider learning more about PivotTables, data analysis, or formulas. Check out Sheet Leveller Learn Excel Page for a comprehensive Excel learning resource.