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Track site actions or organization setting changes made within the last 180 days with change history reports

You can create custom change history reports in the SharePoint admin center to review CSV reports of site actions or organization setting changes made within the last 180 days.

Change history reports can increase visibility and let you monitor changes made to the SharePoint configuration across various levels of your organization.

Create up to 10 reports that track what changed, when it happened, and who initiated the change across the site and organization settings.

Screenshot of change history report dashboard.

What do you need to create a change history report?

The feature discussed in this article requires one of the following licenses:

  • Microsoft 365 Copilot license
  • Microsoft SharePoint Advanced Management license

If your organization has a Copilot license, SharePoint administrators automatically get access to the SharePoint Advanced Management features needed for Copilot deployment.

You can also purchase a standalone SharePoint Advanced Management license.

How to create a change history report?

  1. To create a change history report, go to the Change history page and select New report.

  2. Choose the type of report you want to generate and select Site settings/Organization settings.

  3. A panel appears where you can specify the type of information you want to include in your change history report. Select Create report to generate a new report.

  4. The new report is listed on the change history page. Select the report to open the change history report panel and monitor its status.

  5. Once the report is created, select Download report to export the data as a CSV file. The Create a copy button allows you to create more reports with similar parameters.

Note

  • The report will take a few hours to generate depending on the search criteria selected when creating the report.
  • You can export data for up to 180 days with a change history report depending on the user license. The report may contain data for users that go back 180 days as well as data for others that don’t. Since the type of user license isn’t shown on the report, it may appear as if data is missing for some users.
  • Admins assigned the global reader role do not have the permissions to create or delete a report, but can download to review the changes.

View a change history report

To view change history reports, expand Reports and select Change history.

You can create new reports, delete, and refresh their statuses from the change history page. This page can only show 10 reports at a time. The best practice is to delete a previous report before creating a new one.

Screenshot of change history dashboard with a prefilled new report panel.

What types of change history reports can you create?

You can create two types of change history reports to monitor different aspects of your SharePoint environment. Site settings reports track changes made to individual SharePoint sites, including changes to site properties and configurations performed by Site Administrators and SharePoint Administrators. Organization settings reports monitor changes made at the tenant level through the SharePoint Admin Center, helping you ensure your organization-wide policies and configurations remain aligned with your governance requirements.

Site settings report

Generate a site settings report for a given date range and filter by sites and users. You can download the report as a CSV file to view the site property changes. All site actions performed by Site Administrators and SharePoint Administrators are captured in the report.

Organization settings report

Note

The audited organization settings table listed later in this article reflects the list of settings that are currently tracked under organization settings reports.

You can also generate an organization settings report to track changes made to organization settings from the SharePoint Admin Center. You can generate these reports for custom date ranges while filtering for specific users of interest. A best practice is to review the downloaded reports to ensure there are no deviations in settings from the desired state.

Any changes made to the following organization settings are reflected in the reports. We're continuously working to bring more settings under the ambit of these reports.

Current audited organization settings

The following table lists the latest set of supported settings found under the Settings node:

Name Description
SharePoint Pages Allow commenting on modern pages, Allow users to create new modern pages
SharePoint Site creation Users can create SharePoint site, Create teams sites under, Default time zone, Default storage limit for new sites
SharePoint Notifications Allow notifications
SharePoint Site storage limits Automatic, manual
OneDrive Notifications Allow notifications
OneDrive Retention Days to retain a deleted user's OneDrive
OneDrive Storage limit Default storage limit
OneDrive Sync Show Sync button on the OneDrive website, Allow syncing only on computers joined to specific domains, Block download of specific file types
SharePoint Version history limits Set version history limits

The following table lists the latest set of supported settings found in Access Control under the Policies node:

Name Description
Unmanaged devices Restrict access from devices that aren’t compliant or joined to a domain
Idle session sign out Automatically sign out users from inactive browser sessions
Network location Allow access only from specific IP addresses
Apps that don't use modern authentication Block access from Office 2010 and other apps that can't enforce device-based restrictions
SharePoint access restriction Restrict access to SharePoint sites & content by security group
OneDrive access restriction Restrict access to OneDrive content by security group

The following table lists the latest set of supported settings found in Sharing under the Policies node:

Name Description
External Sharing Content can be shared with, more external sharing settings, other settings
File and folder settings Choose the type of link selected by default when users share files and folders in SharePoint and OneDrive, Choose the permission selected by default for sharing links, Choose who can access files with the URL to a file copied from the browser address bar