Goodwill Community Foundation creating
opportunities for a better life
there may come a time when you're
collaborating on a project and you want
a friend or co-worker to make some
changes to your workbook 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 make
some Corrections there are two features
in Excel that'll 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 this will turn the 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 asks to save your workbook just
click the button to save and continue
and now we can 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 the cell gets this little
triangle in the corner and also a 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 this workbook now has
several different track changes so many
that 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 track
changes command and choose highlight
changes next check the option that says
list the changes on a new sheet then
click OK
a new sheet will appear with a list of
all the changes in the workbook now we
can easily review the edits and also see
which cells they're in right now the
changes that we've made are sort of
temporary meaning they aren't officially
part of the workbook yet to make them
permanent we need to accept or reject
them depending on what 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 click OK when you're ready
you'll be able to review each change and
then accept or reject them one by one I
know I want to keep all the changes in
the workbook though so I'm going to
choose accept all
now the changes are permanent however
the markup won't go away until we turn
track changes off we'll 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 a 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 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 the cell mouse over the cell and you
can easily read the comment if you want
to view all of the comments at once
there's a way to do that too just click
the command that says show all comments
you can use the same command to hide
them again you can even edit the
comments in your workbook for instance
to update something you said or maybe to
reply to someone else just select the
cell you want then go ahead and click
Edit comment I think I'm finished with
the 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 now uncheck the
box that says track changes while
editing once you do this all the track
changes in the 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 all of 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