Goodwill Community Foundation creating
opportunities for a better life there
may come a time when you're
collaborating on a project and you want
to friend your coworker to make some
changes to your worksheet in this
example I'm creating a schedule for a
company retreat and I want my teammates
to fill in some of the blanks and
possibly even make some Corrections
there are two features in Excel that
will make this a lot easier track
changes and comments you can access both
of them on the review tab
first click the track changes command
then choose highlight changes next check
the box where it says track changes
while editing and this will turn this
feature on you can also limit what types
of changes are highlighted but I want to
highlight them all so I'm going to leave
these settings the way they are make
sure the box next to highlight changes
on screen is checked then go ahead and
click OK
if Excel wants to save your workbook
just click the button to save and
continue and now we're ready to start
making some changes let's say I'm a
co-worker and I want to add some
information to the schedule when I do
that this cell gets a little triangle in
the corner and also a new border if you
or anyone else Mouse's over the cell you
can see exactly what was changed and
also who made the change this makes it
easy to keep track of multiple edits
let's skip ahead a little bit and you
can see that this workbook now has a lot
of different track changes so many in
fact but I think they'd be easier to
read if they were listed on a separate
worksheet to do this you'll need to save
your workbook first
then click the try
changes command and choose highlight
changes next check the option that says
list the changes on a new sheet then
click OK and a new sheet will appear
with a list of all the changes in the
workbook we can now easily review the
edits and also see which cells they're
in
so right now the changes we've made our
sort of temporary meaning that they
aren't officially part of the workbook
yet to make them permanent we need to
accept or reject them depending on which
changes we want to keep first go to
track changes then choose accept or
reject from the menu and a little dialog
box will appear I want to look at all of
the changes that haven't been reviewed
yet so I'm going to leave this first
option checked
you could also narrow it down to who
made the change or to a specific range
of cells when you're ready click OK
you'll be able to review each change and
then accept or reject them one by one
now in this case I know I want to keep
all the changes in the workbook so I'm
going to go ahead and choose accept all
okay now these changes are permanent
however this markup won't go away until
we turn track changes off let's get back
to that in a minute another useful
feature for collaborating on workbooks
is the comments feature for example say
I want to leave a note or question about
this item without actually changing
what's in the cell we can do that by
selecting the cell then clicking the new
comment command and now just type your
comment here
and click anywhere outside the box when
you're done comments will show up as a
little triangle in the top-right corner
of a cell just mouse over the cell you
can easily read the comment if you want
to view all of the comments at once
there is a way to do that too just click
the command that says show all comments
you can use that same command to hide
them again you can even edit the
comments in your workbook to update
something you said or maybe reply to
someone else just select the cell you
want then go ahead and click Edit
comment
you know I think I'm finished with this
schedule now so I'm going to delete all
the comments by selecting each one and
then clicking the delete command
I'm also going to turn off track changes
which will finally remove the markup
that you can still see here all you have
to do is go to the track changes command
then highlight changes and now uncheck
the box that says track changes while
editing now once you do this all the
track changes in your workbook will be
accepted automatically so make sure
you're ready for that before you
continue click OK
then click Yes to confirm
and now you're all set
these features can be a big help when it
comes to collaborating on workbooks they
make it easy to keep track of revisions
and communicate ideas back and forth so
you can work on the same file with
anyone you want