Excel 2019 (Part 24): Comments and Co-authors

You might sometimes be working on a workbook and find that you need help from someone else. Excel offers two powerful features that allow you to work with others on the same spreadsheet: Commenting and Co-authoring.

 

The Track Changes feature can also be useful for reviewing changes before making them permanent. It's still available in Office 365, but is currently hidden by default. You can learn more about: How to use Track Changes in Excel here.

Share the workbook with others.

To get others to collaborate on a workbook, you first need to share it with them.

1. Click the Share button in the upper right corner.

2. Click on the OneDrive option linked to your account to upload your workbook.

 

3. The Share panel will appear on the right side of the screen. Enter the email address of the person you want to share the workbook with.

4. Select "Can edit" from the drop-down menu to allow this person to edit the workbook.

5. Enter a message if desired, then click Share.

 

6. Collaborators will now be able to access the workbook.

Comment

One way to collaborate on a workbook is through comments. Sometimes you might want to provide feedback or ask a question without editing the cell's content. You can do this by adding a comment.

How to add a comment

1. Select the cell where you want the comment to appear. For example, select cell D17.

2. From the Review tab , click the New Comment command.

3. A comment box will appear. Enter your comment, then click anywhere outside the box to close the comment.

4. Comments will be added to the box, indicated by the red triangle in the upper right corner.

5. Select the box again to view the comment.

 

How to edit a comment

1. Select the cell containing the comment you want to edit.

2. From the Review tab , click the Edit Comment command.

3. A comment box will appear. Edit your comment as desired, then click anywhere outside the box to close the comment.

How to show or hide comments

1. From the Review tab , click the Show All Comments command to view all comments in the worksheet at once.

2. All comments in the spreadsheet will appear. Click the Show All Comments command again to hide them.

You can also choose to show and hide individual comments by selecting the desired cell and clicking the Show/Hide Comment command .

How to delete a comment

1. Select the cell containing the comment you want to delete. For example, select cell E13.

 

2. From the Review tab , click the Delete command in the Comments group.

3. Comments will be deleted.

Co-author

Another collaboration tool is co-authoring, which allows others to view and edit your workbook in real time. This makes collaborating on the workbook with your team easier and faster. After sharing the workbook with others, they will have co-authoring rights.

Real-time co-authoring requires an Office 365 subscription .

When you apply co-authoring to a workbook, you can see who else is working on it because each person will have their own color. If you want to see who is currently editing the workbook, you can hover over the activity to see their name.

Restore previous version

When you or anyone else makes changes to the workbook, those changes are saved automatically. However, if you are not satisfied with the changes, you can always revert to a previous version.

1. Click the clock icon next to the Share button.

2. The Version History panel will appear on the right side of the screen. Double-click the version you want to restore.

3. Once you've decided this is the version you want, click Restore.

4. The previous version will be restored.