How to undo changes a user has made?

Connie Carson · 07/18/18

I have had someone make some significant changes to one of my smartsheets which will have a huge negative impact on the work the work that I have been doing for the last few months.

Is there anyway we can go in an undo the changes made by a particular user?

Andrée Starå · 07/18/18

Hi Connie,

If you have automatic backups enabled on the sheets that are changed, you could roll back with the help of the spreadsheets, but I would first contact Smartsheet support and see if they can help you.

I hope this helps you!

Best,

Andrée Starå - Workflow Consultant @ Get Done

Paul Newcome · 07/19/18

If there is no back-up in place, and Smartsheet can't do anything for you, the other option would be to look at the activity log for the sheet. It shows you a breakdown for what was changed to what by each user and when. You would then have to go through and change each thing back individually. If the sheet overview doesn't give you enough specifics, it will at least tell you which cell was changed. You could then right-click on the cell and pull it's history. I know it's a long tedious process, but it is better than nothing.

dschulz77231 · 02/27/19

Very strange! I can view the cell history, and manually change each cell, but there is no revert option for the cell history. That is very strange. Not a good thing and very important feature that is missing still to this day. We need to find a better option to the "not so smart" sheet.

Christopher C · 08/13/19

I needed to help restore ~280 rows of information from a column.

I used the following workaround to get an excel file that listed all the old cell values in a column:

1. Filter out the specific change in the activity log (cell change, contributor, date) and download as an excel file.

2. Once file is received, add an additional column with the following formula "=MID(D2, (FIND(":", D2)+2), 8)" or similar (Make sure that column D in this case is where the changes are listed in your excel, and that the last number, 8, is matches the maximum number of digits that your old values were)

- This extracted the first 8 lines of the previous value in the cell.

Explanation: Each row of change in the file is e.g. "Row 1: "352" Column 1......", and this identifies and extracts the first 8 digits coming after Row 1: "

3. Afterwards, if all your old values weren't the same length(i.e. some were shorter), you'll need to remove some additional digits in some columns.

For example, my formula above would give me "352" Col" for row 1.

3a. Highlight the entire new column and press CTRL+F to use the find and replace function.

3b. Write e.g. "" C" in the "Find what:" field and leave the "Replace with:" field blank, then click "Replace All".

Do step 3a and 3b with other values you need to replace, e.g. (" ) and ("), starting from longest to shortest.

Christopher C · 08/13/19

Just to clarify, the point of making this excel file is that I could then copy the entire column and paste it back into the smartsheet, thus restoring the old values.

Paul Newcome · 08/13/19

Very smart workaround. I would have thought of pulling the Excel file, but only as a visual reference that I could use to manually re-enter everything. I would have never even though to manipulate the excel file and the copy/paste. Nicely done!

Christopher C · 08/14/19

Sorry, just a small fix due to a misunderstanding on my part on where the old value to be restored was located in the excel from Smartsheet.

The excel file gives you a full list of changes in the following format:

Row #: "(Primary Column value)" (Column X): (Old Value) to: (New Value)

Where Column X is the column which you want to restore

In order to correct it, I used the following formula:

=MID(J2, (FIND("Column X", J2)+10), 70)

In my case, I could just do a CTRL+F and replace all " to: (blank)" with nothing as everything had been accidentally deleted, and then it was ready to paste back into the sheet.

Andrée Starå · 08/14/19

Excellent tip!

Thanks for sharing!

Erik Jensen · 03/30/21

Chris C, you are my hero. Thank you VERY MUCH!!!

Laura Melroy · 04/21/21

How do you export the activity log into excel?

Andrée Starå · 04/21/21

Hi @Laura Melroy

I hope you're well and safe!

When you request an export of the Activity Log, you get a CSV file sent to you that you'd then import to Excel or similar.

Would that work?

I hope that helps!

Be safe and have a fantastic week!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

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How to undo changes a user has made?

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