I’m not sure if this is a bug or I’m doing something wrong…
I have a shared workbook (xlsx format set of spreadsheets). I have followed the instructions in the Document Editor user guide Version History page.
When I click on Version history (File > Version History), I can see all the versions in the left side bar over months. However, regardless of which version I click on:
The spreadsheet doesn’t refresh or change (page looks the same as the current version, despite knowing that many changes were made) and
No changes are “highlighted with the same color as their avatar in the viewing version history window”. There are no highlighted sections at all (not really surprising since the spreadsheet in the view window doesn’t ever change and seems to only display the current version of the spreadsheet).
Essentially the Version History is useless for me right now because if I were to press “restore” on a prior version, I have no idea which changes would be made/restored to the current spreadsheet. No changes at all are shown regardless of which version I click on (even some that were months ago).
I tried to search for an answer here but didn’t find one so I don’t know if this is a known bug or something unique to me. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Does the same happen when you open the same XLSX directly in DocSpace in a browser (not via Desktop Editors), File → Version history?
Does it reproduce with another simple test XLSX, or only with this specific workbook?
Please record a short video showing the steps and the result (If you face a size limit, then you can upload your video to any cloud storage and share a link to it).
Please update ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors to the latest available build and re-check the behavior.
I apologize for the delay. I’m thinking it may have been a one-time glitch despite reloading things a couple of times that day. I went into the file today and I can see the cells highlighted that were changed on both the DocSpace (desktop) and the browser. Maybe logging/out into DocSpace fixed whatever was going on at the time but I can’t reproduce it now.
The workbook does have several spreadsheets in it so it is slightly more complex than something with a single sheet but within the sheets. However, it’s pretty much just data and maybe just a couple of basic formula’s on one sheet. I kind of doubt that played into it. The version number was up to v112 so maybe things just glitched or had trouble populating things that time because of the version history being lengthy…I’m totally guessing so I’m really no troubleshooting help here.
I guess the only other thing I can say is some improvement suggestions for the future (if they haven’t already been made):
Use brighter/bolder colors or highlights around the cells impacted by changes - the current ‘avatar’ color scheme is a light pastel color which can be hard to see on the screen (I have to look very carefully).
Maybe add highlights of some sort for format marks (it didn’t seem like cells that had a format change were highlighted, just cells that had data added/changed/deleted).
Allow for a detailed text list of changes in the version history under each version (e.g. a list of what changed like ‘data added to cell A1-10’ or bolded A2… etc). In some cases I think a user just added then delete data or a format so it looks like no changes occurred (basically they ‘undid’ their changes within the same edit session).
In the case of multi-sheet workbooks, also highlight tabs/worksheets that were changed so it’s easy to identify which sheets were altered in that version (note: this may already be addressed as it seems to me that each time a sheet is changed in a workbook, a new version is logged - but I’m not 100% sure if that is the case).
Sorry I couldn’t be of more help and that his ended up becoming a suggestion list but I’m really happy that OO is working and I can see the versions. I’ve really enjoyed the OO platform and product - it keeps getting better (plus the engagement with users is very much appreciated).
Thanks for the update — glad to hear Version History is working correctly now.
If the Version History issue happens again, feel free to contact us and we’ll be happy to take a closer look.
As for your suggestions — thank you for the detailed feedback, we’ll pass them to our development team.
Thank you again for such detailed and well-structured feedback — it’s genuinely helpful!
We’ve reviewed all your suggestions regarding Version History in the spreadsheet editor and have logged each of them as a separate improvement request in our internal tracker.
We’ll update this thread as soon as we have any news or progress. Thanks again for taking the time to break everything down so clearly!