Track changes and comments

I need an audit trail for changes in the revenue forecast workbook. Turn on change tracking and ensure comments are enabled on the consolidated sheet, so I can see who altered growth rates. Set it to retain changes for 30 days, and show me how to accept or reject edits and export the change log to CSV for the audit file.

Before I hand this to the project lead, make reviewing edits simple: enable tracked changes with a 30-day retention, ensure comments are visible with the author and timestamp, and add a one-sheet summary that extracts unresolved comments and recent edits to the top. Highlight any rows where the historical forecast was overwritten rather than adjusted by a formula.

I opened the workbook this morning and the Q3 revenue line shifted without an explanatory comment. I don’t know whether someone edited directly or a linked import overwrote it. How do I quickly find who made the change, isolate whether it was manual or an import, and restore the prior value if needed? Give the exact steps I should take now to preserve evidence for the manager and prevent further silent edits.

Over many projects, decisions get lost because comments are buried and edits aren’t traceable. I need a standard that preserves who changed what and why. Propose a routine: when to require comments, how long to keep tracked changes, how to extract a human-readable change log for PMs, and practices to prevent silent overwrites during consolidation.