Longer Undo Lists In Excel

In Microsoft Office, the Excel undo list has a limit of sixteen entries, which for some power users can be too few but with a single registry hack, it can be changed to any number you like.

The main body of this article explains how to alter the registry which if done incorrectly can cause your system to malfunction. Please only attempt this tutorial if you are confident of your ability, Chimpytech.com cannot accept any responsibility for any damage caused to your system.

First you will need to navigate to the correct registry folder for your version of Excel

  • Click on the ‘Start’ button and select ‘Run’ from the menu.
  • Type ‘Regedit’ in the dialog box.
  • Select the key ‘Hkey_Current_User’ and expand it by clicking on the ‘+’ sign next to it.
  • Expand the ‘Software’ folder
  • Expand the ‘Microsoft’ folder
  • Expand the ‘Office ‘ folder
  • Expand the ‘11.0’ folder*
  • Expand the ‘Excel’ folder
  • Select the ‘Options Folder

In the right hand window you will now see a list of registry values, you will need to add a new one:

    • Select ‘Edit from the menu bar.
    • Select ‘New’ from the drop down menu.
    • Select ‘Dword Value’ from the sub-menu.
    • Now create a registry value called ‘UndoHistory’ – Note, this is case sensitive.
    • Now right click your new value and enter the number of undo steps you would like. You may need to change the radio button from Hexadecimal to decimal first. In the example below we have selected thirty steps. It is possible to enter up to one hundred undo steps, but in practice this is almost certainly too many, and compromises performance – We recommend a maximum of thirty steps.

 

    • Click ‘OK’ and you will now see your new registry entry listed.

 

  • Exit the Registry, and start Excel to check your extra Undo levels are available to you.

*NOTE – Our example has been created on a machine running Excel 2003, thus we have selected the folder for Microsoft Office 11.0, if you are using a different version of Microsoft Office then your Folder number will be different.