Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Excel 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Excel, click here: Resolving Revisions.

Resolving Revisions

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated October 29, 2022)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003

Excel allows you to easily track revisions made to your workbooks. At some time you will want to resolve your changes to get rid of the revision marks. This is typically done as you are finalizing a workbook, after you are sure that the changes are something you really want to keep. Excel allows you to automate much of the resolution process.

  1. Choose Track Changes from the Tools menu. This displays a submenu.
  2. Choose Accept Or Reject Changes from the submenu. Excel displays the Select Changes to Accept or Reject dialog box.
  3. If desired, use the radio buttons to indicate the criteria by which you want to review changes: when changes were made, who made them, and where they were made in the workbook.
  4. Click on the OK button to begin the reviewing process. Excel highlights an edited cell with an animated cell border and information about the edit is displayed in the Accept or Reject Changes dialog box.
  5. Click your mouse on Accept or Reject, depending on whether you want Excel to accept or reject the proposed edit. Excel moves on to the next change in the workbook.
  6. Repeat step 5 for each remaining edited cell.

You will notice that when you are done reviewing changes, Excel still shows edited cells with the blue border and tracking changes indicator. The only way to get rid of these (after you have reviewed all the changes) is to turn off the revision marking.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2869) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Excel (Excel 2007 and later) here: Resolving Revisions.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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