OT- Any Excel Whizzes on here?

Is it possible to do something to a spreadsheet to log who has accessed it?

Basically I've got a colleague the grade below me taking an unhealthy interest in my practice (they didn't get the job I'm now in) and whilst they have done this to someone else in the past, I want to get some more solid evidence.

I don't want to protect the worksheet.

 

Is that you James?

 

Haha!!

 

This might not work, but if they've changed something, I'm fairly certain you can see previous versions of the document, and when they were changed. In my old job, we used to have issues with staff on the opposite shift deleting files and claiming we'd forgotten to upload them, until I found this out and we were able to call them out on it.

Right click on the file, hit properties, then previous versions. Sometimes it doesn't show anything, sometimes it does. I don't really know how it works.

 

Is it stored on a SharePoint Titus?

 

You need to switch on track changes.

But of course it can be turned back off

 

They're not changing anything, just monitoring me when they have no cause to.

 

It's currently on a Team shared drive mate, so not sure if its sharepoint. I open the file up through a folder not a web link etc if that helps.

 

To me, and I'm no expert, it's not the Excel itself as I don't think it has access control functionality inherent, but let's say it's stored on SharePoint or Teams - that's the one you need to use to help you.

 

I've gone into the review tab but changes is just greyed out. Possibly because it has macros on it, no idea?

 

Have a look at this mate. As I say I reckon Teams/Sharepoint is the way as that's the software that allows the multi-user access (someone on here will know th best way if this doesn't work I'm sure):

Microsoft Teams: Can You See Who Opened a File? - Technipages

 

Let them waste their time. Ignore them.

 

Would it affect any innocent party If you save it under a different name , then leave the original with some dodgy information so that you can see if it’s being used?

 

<Geek>
The previous versions bit usually links into whether the underlying storage has volume shadow copy turned on - so something like OneDrive or SharePoint online would by default, but not necessarily if it was on-premises storage. It eats storage, so can be expensive to implement.

Through Teams, provided you have rights you should be able to limit who has access to a file and you can see who modified the file last - this is the last person to save it, so if you set Autosave on and its open for more than a few minutes it will automatically save.
</Geek>

 

Ok so they aren't changing anything. But being nosey.

Do they actually need to access it to do their job...

If not password protect the bugger and shut them out.

 

2 or 3 people need access to it so I can't unfortunately, we all have a version of this file for our records and I don't want to draw attention to myself by protecting mine.

 

I know, I'm just aware they've caused someone else a lot of problems in the past and I want them to know that I won't tolerate it. I just need some further solid ammo to do that i think and nip it in the bud.

 

I've used Teams to access files before and could see how that would work, but unfortunately we access the file directly via the network drive so it doesn't go via Teams or SharePoint.

 

In that case if it stays on a network share and unable to password protect it, what you want isn't possible directly in excel itself.

Short of asking your IT department to log who accesses it (even if they accept to do so). But it is possible to turn on auditing at server level