Tracking changes in a spreadsheet

Not a dumb question.

To know who is opening a spreadsheet, you'd need to use macros (VBA) and the person opening it would need to enable macros. So probably not a great option unless it's already a macroed workbook
To track changes on a spreadsheet, you'll need to save it as a shared workbook. Then on the Review tab, "Track Changes>Highlight Changes. I prefer checking "List Changes on a New Sheet" and uncheck everything else. Excel will create a nonsavable worksheet showing who made what changes.
Does that help?

Hi,

The easiest way to monitor who opens the workbook (and when) is to use the Workbook Open Event VBA procedure and a hidden sheet.

In that procedure include an instruction like

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If you need to capture information about what changes are made then you could use the Sheet Change Event. e.g. assuming you want to capture changes in say columns C:E on a sheet called "hidden_sheet_name" then something like...

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Hi Richard
When I copy your code over, I get compile errors ("Excpected: List seeparator or )" ) on the lines copying the changes into the hidden sheet. It always highlights the letters in quotes i.e. "C" or "E".

Hi,

My apologies. I was using the VB sheet code name in my test but when I added the code here I changed to a tab name and I see I missed out a pair of quotes. So in lines which have

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that should of course read

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Thanks Richard,
I should have caught that!