How do I share a Google Sheets document and restrict editing to only one column and yet hide the document history from them too?

Question

I have a Google Sheets document that I want to share to many users. However, they must only be able to edit one column. This part seems fine, however, I have numerous other hidden tabs for the purpose of calculations that need to remain hidden (I think I can get this to work by not allowing them to edit these sheets).

The issue arises where I need the history of the document to be hidden as it seems to allow everyone to be able to see all of the background data. Otherwise I will have to resort back to Excel.

Is this another area where Sheets hasn't quite caught up to Excel?

Answer 1

If you're giving them “Edit Access” they will necessarily be able to view the document history, according to the Google Docs Help Forum and my experience.

If you only need to do this once, before you share, you can work around it:

1. Do all your secret editing and hiding.
2. Copy the sheet to a brand new sheet (optionally delete the old one)
3. Share the new sheet with edit access. It won't have any history.