A log of when an Excel document has been opened

[FloydPalmer]

Hi,

I have a document of someone else's that I check daily and it was made aware to me that the individual whose document it is, knew that I was doing this. And I wasn't sure how this was possible. As far as I know, there's no way to log when an Excel or Microsoft document has been opened (modified, yes - which I never did) so was it guesswork or making assumptions?

I thought perhaps the individual would have this document open all the time, and when I tried to open it, she'd get an alert (she was specific about how many times I was opening the document in a day)? I never had an alert saying "so and so has this document open would you like a read-only version?"

Baffled, any information helpful.

Thank you

 

[jmacleary]

If its a macro enabled document, then its easy to create a workbook open event handler which could be written to capture the date and time on a hidden sheet, send an email, etc. Also, there is a property of all windows files called 'accessed', which is set regardless of whether any changes are made.

 

[FloydPalmer]

If its a macro enabled document, then its easy to create a workbook open event handler which could be written to capture the date and time on a hidden sheet, send an email, etc. Also, there is a property of all windows files called 'accessed', which is set regardless of whether any changes are made.

To answer your former question, it's not (I would't know how to) but a simple Excel document. And on the latter, how could I access this?

 

[jmacleary]

Hi there. What version of excel is the file? To see the properties of any file, use File Explorer. Right-click on the file name and select Properties. The last time it was accessed (by anybody) is shown in the General tab. However, if as you say she knew when you had been accessing it, then I think its more likely she has a macro that runs when you open it. To check this, open the document and right-click on any of the tabs. Select View Code. This opens the VBA editor. Click on the ThisWorkbook shown in the left hand pane. Click Edit, Find and select Current Project. Then search for AutoOpen.

 

[FloydPalmer]

Hi there. What version of excel is the file? To see the properties of any file, use File Explorer. Right-click on the file name and select Properties. The last time it was accessed (by anybody) is shown in the General tab. However, if as you say she knew when you had been accessing it, then I think its more likely she has a macro that runs when you open it. To check this, open the document and right-click on any of the tabs. Select View Code. This opens the VBA editor. Click on the ThisWorkbook shown in the left hand pane. Click Edit, Find and select Current Project. Then search for AutoOpen.

It's Excel 2016.

I've tried the General tab by the route you've said on documents of mine, yet it gives the previous time I opened and accessed it. I would expect Accessed date/time to be different from Modified?

 

[jmacleary]

OK. You're right, I've just done a bit of digging and the accessed property is defaulted to the same as the updated property in Windows. The reason it works on my machine is we have a company policy that has this turned on (for backup utilities to work properly). So in your case, I don't think she's getting the info from windows. This brings me back to there being some macro code - what is the document suffix .xlsx, .xls or .xlsm?

 

[FloydPalmer]

OK. You're right, I've just done a bit of digging and the accessed property is defaulted to the same as the updated property in Windows. The reason it works on my machine is we have a company policy that has this turned on (for backup utilities to work properly). So in your case, I don't think she's getting the info from windows. This brings me back to there being some macro code - what is the document suffix .xlsx, .xls or .xlsm?

It's .xslx

If she has gone down the macro route, she's exceeded everyone's expectations!

Thank you for your help.