New ‘Show Changes’ feature Coming to Excel for the Web

Michael Reinders

Mar 17, 2021

One of Microsoft Excel’s Project Managers (PMs) on the Office Insider team recently published another ‘Feature deep dive‘. They announced a coming feature called Show Changes, which will allow authors more confidence when sharing and collaborating with others on Excel for the Web.

‘Show Changes’ will allow users sharing Excel files on OneDrive or SharePoint sites to view every change made to an Excel workbook over the past 60 days. You no longer have to worry about sharing your beautifully, meticulously crafted Excel spreadsheet with others, giving them edit rights. You’ll be able to review every change made with the new Changes pane on the right.

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In your Excel file online, click the Review tab and click Show Changes. The Changes pane will open on the right showing you the changes to the spreadsheet with the recent changes on top.

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The Show Changes feature enables you to collaborate confidently with others by letting you see exactly what edits were made to your workbooks in the past 60 days. You can see details about who changed what, where, and when along with the previous values of cells for quick reverting if necessary. You can filter the changes by selecting any sheet, range, or individual cell, to check all the changes at that granular level. You can even peer into when bulk edits were made across a potentially larger number of cells.

Edits are showing in the Changes pane, starting with the most recent.
You can see who made the changes, where, and when, as well as what the edits were.
In cards, like the one below, which are tracking a similar change to multiple cells, you can see all the changes made at once by selecting See changes.

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You can also filter and see changes at the cell, range, or even Sheet by right-clicking it and clicking Show Changes.

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If you or others edit the workbook while the Changes pane is open, you can update the workbook with the latest changes by selecting the See new changes button.

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Microsoft will be rolling this feature out in Excel for the web for users running Targeted release builds. I would imagine we should start to see this appear later in March. This timeline is subject to change. To contribute Feedback to Microsoft once this feature is available to you, click Help -> Feedback and fill out the short form.