There may come a time when you're collaborating on a project, and you want a friend or coworker
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 coworker, 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 mouses 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 tracked 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… then clicking the Delete command.
I'm also going to turn off tracked 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 tracked 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.