Last Person to Save a Workbook

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated February 21, 2025)
This tip applies to Excel 2016, 2019, 2021, 2024, and Excel in Microsoft 365

Bill needs to investigate some changes that were made in a workbook. Key to starting this is to figure out who the last person was that saved the workbook. Bill wonders if this information is available in Excel. If so, he wonders if the information is compromised if someone subsequently opens the workbook but doesn't save it.

You can see the last person to save a workbook by displaying the File tab of the ribbon and then clicking Info at the left side of the screen. At the right side of the screen, under the heading "Related People," you can see two pieces of info regarding users: who created (authored) the workbook and who last saved the workbook. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. Seeing who last saved a workbook.

This info is not disturbed unless someone again saves the workbook.

You can even see who last saved a workbook by taking these actions within Windows. (Go ahead and close Excel.)

  1. Locate the workbook you want to examine.
  2. Right-click on the workbook. Windows displays a Context menu.
  3. Choose Properties. Windows displays a Properties dialog box for the workbook.
  4. Display the Details tab of the dialog box.

In this dialog box you can see "Last Saved By" and a name. The name should match the one visible on the Info area described earlier.

If you prefer a macro solution, you could use this one-line macro to do the trick:

Sub LastSaver()
    MsgBox "Last saved by: " & ActiveWorkbook.BuiltinDocumentProperties("Last Author")
End Sub

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (8800) applies to Microsoft Excel 2016, 2019, 2021, 2024, and Excel in Microsoft 365.

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. ...

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