SharePoint Change History report: find setting changes

Key insights

• Create a Site settings or Organization settings report in the SharePoint admin center.
• Reports can cover changes from the previous 180 days and take several hours to generate.
• Site reports can be filtered by date range, site, and user.
• Download results as a CSV, then use Excel filters to inspect settings and values.
• The source says you need SharePoint or Global Administrator access and Advanced Management or a Microsoft 365 Copilot license.

SharePoint Change history reports help administrators find who changed site or organization settings, what changed, and when. They are useful when a sharing, membership, or other setting appears different from expected and an admin needs to investigate. SharePoint Maven Inc demonstrates how to create and read a report in a YouTube video.

What's new

Change history is a report-based way to review supported SharePoint configuration changes. The report separates site-level changes from organization-level changes, so admins can investigate either an individual site or settings that apply across the tenant.

Examples in the demonstration include changes to external sharing, site membership, and a site's association with a hub. For organization settings, the examples include changes to global external-sharing settings. A report can show the affected site or setting, the person who made a change, and the time; for a sharing change, the demonstrated results also include the previous and new values.

The report is generated on request and downloaded as a CSV. In Excel, formatting the data as a table makes it easier to filter for the change type or site that matters. This is an investigation aid for configuration changes, not a complete history of every SharePoint activity.

Who it is for and what you need

The report is aimed at SharePoint administrators investigating configuration changes. The video says report creation requires a SharePoint Administrator or Global Administrator and either the SharePoint Advanced Management add-on or a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. It also notes that the Change history option appears in the admin center when the required license is available.

The demonstration does not establish whether the feature is available in every tenant, region, or licensing arrangement. It also does not give a rollout stage or a detailed list of supported settings. Confirm the required access and license in your own environment before planning a reporting process.

Allow several hours for a report to finish. The report can look back no more than 180 days, and the source says up to 10 reports can be run at once. That makes it important to choose a useful date range and scope rather than treating the report as a long-term archive.

How it works

Start in the SharePoint admin center, not just the Microsoft 365 admin center. The demonstration finds Change history under Reports; it also notes that the report is accessible from the Advanced management area. The report page lists reports already created, or is blank the first time it is opened.

1. In the SharePoint admin center, open Reports and select Change history.
2. Select New report and choose Site settings or Organization settings. Site settings covers changes associated with sites; organization settings covers tenant-wide settings.
3. Name the report and set its start and end dates. For a site report, select specific site URLs if needed; by default, the report checks all sites. You can also choose whether to include changes by everyone or specify users.
4. Select Create report. Wait for processing to complete, then open the report and select Download report to get the CSV.
5. Open the CSV in Excel and, if useful, format the data as a table. Filter by change type or other available columns to find the relevant records and compare the prior and new values where provided.

The report page can summarize the period and number of changes found. The transcript demonstrates reviewing previously generated results rather than waiting for a new report to finish, because generation can take several hours.

Limitations and open questions

The 180-day lookback is a firm boundary in the supplied material. If the change occurred earlier, this report cannot provide a record for it. The source also says that report generation takes hours and limits concurrent reports to 10.

Change history focuses on settings changes, so it should not be treated as a substitute for broader activity auditing. The video mentions audit logs and PowerShell as approaches used previously, but the supplied sources do not give detailed instructions for either. They also do not establish exactly which setting changes are included or explain how long downloaded CSV files should be retained.

For a practical investigation, identify when the issue began, choose a report scope and date range that cover that period, and filter the CSV for the affected setting or site. If no relevant row appears, the material does not establish whether that means no change occurred or that the change falls outside the report's coverage. Do not assume the report captures every administrative action.

Sources

• SharePoint Maven Inc demonstration of the Change history report
• SharePoint Maven Inc website

Frequently asked questions

What license do I need for SharePoint Change history reports?

The source says you need SharePoint Advanced Management or a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. It does not confirm availability for every licensing arrangement or tenant.

How far back can a SharePoint Change history report look?

The report covers a maximum of 180 days, according to the source material.

How do I create a SharePoint Change history report?

In the SharePoint admin center, open Reports, choose Change history, select New report, choose Site settings or Organization settings, set the report options, and create it. Once it has finished processing, download the CSV.

How long does it take to generate a Change history report?

The source says generation takes several hours. It does not specify a precise completion time.