Special Edition Using Microsoft® Office XP

Secrets of the Office Masters: Beware of Undo

Like all Office applications, Excel includes an Undo button and a corresponding keyboard shortcut—Ctrl+Z. Unlike Word, however, which stores an unlimited number of changes, Excel can undo only the 16 most recent actions. When the Undo buffer is full, the oldest entry in the list vanishes to make room for your most recent formatting change, move, copy, data entry, or other action. In previous Excel versions, a simple change in the Registry could expand the Undo buffer significantly; however, that Registry hack no longer works in Excel 2001.

Excel's Undo feature has other significant limitations. For example, if you delete rows from a list and then remove outlining, you cannot undo any changes. Likewise, ...