Safely keep revision history, track and compare changes in Excel spreadsheets

Some disappointments are familiar to every Excel user. You or your colleagues may enter incorrect values or even delete critical data by mistake. MS Excel Track Changes feature comes with limitations: history of changes is periodically deleted, it does not do backups and works only for shared workbooks. How can you protect data without piles of backup copies or complicated macros?

XLTools Version Control add-in solves these problems and keeps your data safe:

Version Control for Workbooks is one of the 20+ features within XLTools Add-in for Excel. Works in Excel 2019, 2016, 2013, 2010, desktop Office 365.

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XLTools Version Control add-in for Excel workbooks is a revision control, or a source control tool. It helps track changes to Excel files and gives a clear picture of who, how and when modified the document.

1. Open a workbook Click the Enable button on XLTools tab.
2. In the Settings window, click Enable Done, now you are tracking changes and history of the spreadsheet. Next, you can commit versions of the workbook.

Or: Open XLTools Settings Version Control tab Enable.

Once you enable Version Control in a workbook, we recommend you commit the initial version to Change Log. This will allow you to compare future versions with it, as well as restore the initial version if necessary.

1. Click the Commit Changes button A dialogue box will open.
2. Add a descriptive comment, e.g. "Initial version" OK Done, the initial version is saved to Change Log.

As you keep editing the workbook, keep committing versions along the way. We recommend you commit a version after any critical changes, or as often as often as you find necessary.

1. Make changes When ready to commit the version, click Commit Changes.
2. Add a comment OK.

Tip: create descriptive comments. It will help tell the versions apart and search for the necessary version in the Change Log.

By default, a version is committed to Change Log through the Commit Changes button on the ribbon. If you want to commit a version every time you save the file, specify this in the settings:

1. Open XLTools Settings Version Control tab.
2. Check the box "Commit a version to Change Log every time I save a workbook with changes".

1. Edit the workbook Click Commit Changes A window will open.
2. To preview and diff changes, double-click on the modified worksheet name in the list.
3. A temporary file will open, and the Newer version will have the changed cells highlighted in red color.
4. Review the result Close the temporary file Click OK to commit this new version, or Cancel to go back to editing the workbook.

All versions of a workbook that were committed to Change Log are saved to the Git repository on your computer. Being a widely adopted system for revision control, Git accurately records all changes and does not take much of your disk space.

Immediately after you enable Version Control, a folder 'WorkbookName_Revisions' is automatically generated in the same destination as the workbook. This is the Git repository that will safely store all revision history of the workbook. Every time you commit a version, it is saved to the repository.

Important: do NOT delete, rename or move this repository folder. Otherwise the revision history will be lost.

The Change Log shows the list of all previously committed versions.

Click the Change Log button on XLTools tab The Change Log will open.

• Review the list of versions: it displays comments, authors and the time the version was committed. You can see who made changes and when.
• Filter the committed versions and search for the version you need. Type what you are looking for, and the search will run through version names, comments, authors and dates.
• Review the tools in the menu: you can expand and collapse the list, open, save, roll back to, diff and compare versions.

You can easily compare two worksheet versions with each other:

1. Click the Change Log button The log will open.

2. Hold the Ctrl key and select two worksheet versions you want to compare In the log's menu, or in the right-click context menu, select Compare two selected versions.

   

   
3. A temporary workbook will open. The sheet with the Newer version has the modified cells highlighted in red.

Note: the Version Control tool compares the values in cells. If the values are different in the two versions, the cell will be highlighted. Version Control does not (yet) track changes to formulas, formats, added or removed rows and columns.

In the same way, you can compare any worksheet version with the previous or the current version:

1. Click the Change Log button Select any worksheet version.
2. In the log's menu, or in the right-click context menu, select Diff with Previous version or Diff with Current version.
3. A temporary workbook will open, and the modified cells will be highlighted.

The Version Control tool is integrated with the Inquire plugin. It helps compare spreadsheet versions in more detail.

The Inquire plugin is a free plugin by Microsoft, available in Office Professional Plus edition. See how to turn on Inquire in Excel.

1. Click the Change Log button The log will open.

2. Hold the Ctrl key and select two workbook versions you want to compare In the log's menu, or in the right-click context menu, select Compare two selected versions in Inquire.

   

   
3. The result of the comparison will open in Inquire: review the changes to values, formulas, document structure, formats, etc.

In the same way, you can compare any workbook version with the previous or the current version:

1. Click the Change Log button Select any workbook version.
2. In the log's menu, or in the right-click context menu, select Diff with Previous version in Inquire or Diff with Current version in Inquire.
3. The result of the comparison will open in Inquire.

To open, save or roll back to any previous workbook version:

1. Click the Change Log button Select the workbook version you need.

2. In the log's menu, or in the right-click context menu, select the operation you need:

   • Open this workbook version
   • Save this workbook version as
   • Roll back to this version

XLTools Version Control add-in helps arrange group work and collaborate on shared spreadsheets effectively.

1. Make sure that all your team members have XLTools add-in installed on their PCs.
2. Place the workbook in a shared folder on a local disk Share the workbook with your team Provide reading and writing permissions. This prevents anyone outside the group from editing the workbook under versioning.
3. Each member can commit and compare versions and view the Change Log.

If you work with macros in Excel, you can also use Version Control to track and compare changes in your VBA projects.

When the spreadsheet is stored on a network folder or a cloud drive, Version Control may return file path errors (“pathname is too long”). In order to store revision history, the Git repository creates nested folders and sometimes the paths to these subfolders may exceed the limitation set in Windows.

Our development team is already searching for a workaround. In the meanwhile, we recommend you try and shorten the network path, as well as the name of the spreadsheet. Or, save the spreadsheets on the local disk on your computer.