Saving Versions

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated August 21, 2021)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


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 (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.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2879) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.

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. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Temporarily Changing the Printer in a Macro

You can use a macro to print to any printer you have defined in Windows. It is good practice, if you are changing which ...

Discover More

Paragraph Numbers in Headers or Footers

If your documents routinely use numbered paragraphs, you may want to place the number of the page's first paragraph in ...

Discover More

Special Symbols Followed by a Non-Breaking Space

When you want to automatically insert a special sequence of characters in a document, there are two methods you can use. ...

Discover More

Professional Development Guidance! Four world-class developers offer start-to-finish guidance for building powerful, robust, and secure applications with Excel. The authors show how to consistently make the right design decisions and make the most of Excel's powerful features. Check out Professional Excel Development today!

More ExcelTips (menu)

Returning a Worksheet Name

Need to know the name of the current worksheet? You can use the CELL function as the basis for finding this information ...

Discover More

Determining a Worksheet's Number

When you add a new worksheet to a workbook, it receives a meaningful name such as "Sheet4" or "Sheet17." If you want to ...

Discover More

Finding the Size of Individual Worksheets

Your workbooks can contain many, many worksheets. Which of those worksheets are the largest, however? Here's some ideas ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is 8 - 4?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)


This Site

Got a version of Excel that uses the menu interface (Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, or Excel 2003)? This site is for you! If you use a later version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the ribbon interface.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.