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I turned on Show Edit History for one cell in a Google Sheet and now I want to turn it off for that one cell.
I can't see any way to do so. If I right-click on the cell I see Show Edit History but it is not a toggle, as I would have hoped. I don't see anything useful in the menus and web-searching has not been fruitful.
I am not trying to turn off or opt-out of the entire feature. I only want to deactivate show edit history for a single cell.
Cell edit history isn't a opt-in feature, there isn't a turn on/off setting for it, either a spreadsheet level, neither a cell level.
If you edited a cell after the feature was added by Google to your spreadsheet, it can't be turned off for that cell as well it isn’t possible to turn it off/opt-out.
References
I turned on
Show edit history
No. You selected the Show edit history option to view history specific to a single cell. You didn't enable, or turn on, anything.¹
¹ Already noted in Rubén's answer
From the time it is created, Sheets logs document changes/edits. This continues regardless what option an Editor uses to view this history, or even if the history is never viewed at all.
This history/logging cannot be disabled at a cell, sheet, or document level.
The addition of the Show edit history option provided Editors an efficient way to view the document's history filtered for a specific cell and without needing to leave the document's edit mode. This option made a lot of sense in contrast to the existing alternatives and simplified the typical Editor's workflow.
For example, prior to the addition of cell-specific history, an Editor could still access that same information via the version history interface with Show changes selected. However it required clicking through versions (logged changes grouped by date/time) to find the changes specific to that one cell.
Depending on the total number of changes, the number of changes specific to a cell, and whether the rough date/time of the changes was known, it could easily become very time consuming in the absence of a script or extension.
Additionally, the version history interface is distinct from the document editing mode. In the case where one simply wanted some cell-specific history, this approach was extremely and unnecessarily disruptive to an Editor's workflow.
See version history and Show edit history both access the same information.Copying a source document's content to a newly created target will provide a fresh start. Both documents will include the same content but the source document's history can't be copied along with its content.
Copying a document (as opposed to its content) achieves the same result. From the list below, "Make a copy" is the best choice for most Editors however all of the listed methods create a new document without any of the original document's history:
³ See Table
| Document | Extension |
|---|---|
| Microsoft Excel | XLSX |
| OpenDocument Spreadsheet | ODS |
| PDF Document | |
| Web Page | HTML (ZIP archive) |
| Comma-Seperated Values | CSV |
| Tab-Seperated Values | TSV |
