To err is human. Every Excel spreadsheet user at some point makes a mistake and needs to undo a change made.
Now, life does not give you a second chance, but fortunately, Excel does.
Picture this – you’ve worked on a fairly large dataset, added and deleted rows, done some calculations, when you suddenly realize one of the rows you had inserted at some point of your transaction should not have been added.
Simply removing this row will cause a whole cascade of subsequent errors in a number of places where you had used that row’s values.
Under such circumstances, the only way to solve the problem would be to go back to the point in time where you inserted the particular row and undo that and the subsequent actions you had taken.
Excel’s undo feature lets you track the last 100 changes you made to your worksheet, which you can reverse at any point as needed.
In this tutorial we will look at two ways to undo changes made to your spreadsheets:
- Using the Keyboard shortcut CTRL+Z
- Using the Quick Access Toolbar
How to Undo in Excel Using a Keyboard Shortcut
This is the quickest way to undo a previous change. Using the keyboard shortcut CTRL+Z (on a PC) or CMD+Z (on a Mac), you can step back one level to undo the last change that you made to your spreadsheet.
Pressing the shortcut again will take you one step further back and so on.
In this way, you can reverse the effects of the past 100 changes that you made by executing Undo more than once.
This is a good way to undo recent changes, but if you want to undo a change that you had made around 10 steps before, then this method might not be that convenient.
You can then, instead, use the next method.
How to Undo in Excel Using the Quick Access Toolbar
The Quick Access Toolbar that is visible at the top left of the Excel window lets you perform frequently-used tasks with just a click.
To quickly undo the last action, click on the Undo button in the Quick Access Toolbar once. To undo the last n actions, click the undo button n-times.
The toolbar comes with a dropdown arrow just next to it, which lets you undo several actions at once. So, all you need to do is:
- Click on the dropdown arrow next to the undo button of the Quick Access Toolbar.
- You will see a list of past actions performed.
- Select the point in the list from which you want to undo all actions.
- You will find all actions including and after the selected point undone.
What to do if you cannot See the Undo button in the Quick Access Toolbar
If you cannot see the Undo button in the Quick Access Toolbar, chances are that you or someone else might have accidentally removed the button from the toolbar.
But bringing the button back to the toolbar is really easy. All you need to do is:
- Click on the Customize Quick Access Toolbar arrow as shown below:
- You should see a list of commonly used quick access buttons.
- Select Undo (and also Redo if needed).
You should now see the Undo button included in the Quick Access Toolbar.
How to Undo in Excel Using the Classic Version of Excel
The classic version of Excel (versions 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 365) have the Undo tool under the Edit menu.
If you’re using any of the versions mentioned, then you can access the toolbar as follows:
- Click the Menus tab
- Click the Edit menu
- Select Undo from the drop-down menu that appears.
How to Redo an Undone Action
Finally, if you undo an action or a set of actions and later decide that you do want those changes after all, then you can simply redo the actions.
You can redo the actions by either using the shortcut CTRL+Y (on a PC) / CMD+Y (on a Mac) or by pressing the Redo button (next to the Undo button) in the Quick Access Toolbar.
In this tutorial, we showed you two ways in which you can undo changes you made to your Excel sheet.
The undo tool can be really handy as it helps you undo one or more changes made with either a keyboard shortcut or the click of a mouse.
In this way, your worksheet gets back to a previous point in the history of your actions, almost as if you never performed that action at all.
I hope this tutorial has been helpful to you.
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