Saving Versions

Those familiar with Word may know how to use the Version feature of that program to save different versions of the same document, all within the same file. You may wonder if such a feature was built into Excel, as well.

Excel does not have such a capability; there is no versioning feature. You can, however, use custom views (View menu) to create different ways of looking at your worksheet. Custom views are described fully in other issues of ExcelTips; they basically allow you to specify things such as which rows and columns are visible, row height, column width, formatting characteristics, etc. While not a true "version," custom views do provide a way that you can show different information to different people.

Another approach is to periodically create copies of your worksheets. (In Excel 2007 display the Home tab of the ribbon, click the Format tool in the Cells group, then choose Move or Copy Sheet. In older versions of Excel use Edit | Move or Copy Sheet.) Each copy you create can represent a different version of the worksheet. You could also just make copies of your entire workbook periodically, and then name each copy so that it represents a different version of your data.