You send a financial model, a budget, or a cap table to someone and want to know if they have looked at it. It is a simple question with a surprisingly complicated answer, and it differs depending on whether you are using Excel or Google Sheets.
The short version: Google Sheets can show you who viewed a file, but only if everyone involved has a Google Workspace account. Excel cannot track views natively at all. For sharing a spreadsheet externally and knowing when it is opened, neither tool does the job on its own.
Can you see who opened a Microsoft Excel file?
Excel on SharePoint or OneDrive
If you are sharing an Excel file through SharePoint or OneDrive within your organisation, you can see some activity. In SharePoint, site admins can run an audit report that includes file access events. OneDrive for Business shows recent activity on files, though the detail available to individual users (as opposed to IT admins) is limited.
What you will not get from SharePoint or OneDrive: real-time notifications when someone opens the file, a view of which tabs they spent time on, or any tracking for external recipients outside your organisation.
A standalone .xlsx file
If you email an Excel file as an attachment, there is no native way to know if the recipient opened it. The file leaves your control the moment it is sent. You have no view of whether it was opened, forwarded, or downloaded by additional people.
This is the most common situation for founders sending financial models to investors, and it is the situation where you have the least visibility.
Can you see who viewed a Google Sheets file?
Activity dashboard (Google Workspace accounts only)
Google Sheets has a built-in feature called the Activity Dashboard. To access it, open the spreadsheet, click Tools in the menu, and select Activity Dashboard. This shows a list of people who have viewed the file and when they last accessed it.
Important limitation: this feature is only available on Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) accounts. If you or the viewer are on a personal Gmail account, the Activity Dashboard will either not appear or will not show viewer details. The person viewing also has the option to turn off their activity history, in which case they will appear in your share list but not in the viewer log.
Version history shows edits, not views
Version history (File > Version History) records every edit and who made it. It does not record views. Someone who opens the file and reads every cell without changing anything will not appear in the version history.
Personal Gmail accounts
For files shared with personal Gmail addresses, the Activity Dashboard is effectively disabled. You can see who has access, but not whether they have opened the file. If you share your financial model with an investor's personal Gmail address, you have no visibility at all.
When you share a spreadsheet as a link
Both Excel (via OneDrive) and Google Sheets allow you to create a shareable link. When you share a link rather than adding specific people, the viewer does not need to be signed in with a Google or Microsoft account. The file opens in their browser anonymously.
In this scenario, neither Excel nor Google Sheets can tell you anything about who opened the file. The link could be opened once or twenty times, by the person you sent it to or by someone they forwarded it to. You have no way to know.
How to track who opened any spreadsheet
The gap that neither Excel nor Google Sheets fills is external viewer tracking: knowing when someone outside your organisation opened a file you shared with them. The same gap exists with PDF documents, Google Drive links, and email attachments. The pattern is consistent: native tools show you who has access, not who has looked.
The workaround is to upload the spreadsheet to a document-sharing platform and send a tracked link instead of the file itself. The recipient opens the same spreadsheet in their browser, and you receive a notification when they do.
What you can see with Pitchwise
When you upload a spreadsheet to Pitchwise and share the link, you can see:
- Whether the recipient has opened the file and when
- How many times they have returned to it
- How long they spent on each page or tab
- Whether they attempted to download it
You can also block downloads so the file stays in your Pitchwise link and cannot be saved to their device, and you can set link permissions including an expiry date and email gate, if you want to verify who is opening the file before they can view it.
This is particularly useful for financial models sent to investors, where knowing whether the recipient has actually looked at the numbers before a follow-up call changes what you say on that call.
| Sharing method | Can you see who opened it? | Real-time notification? |
|---|
| Email attachment (.xlsx) | No | No |
| OneDrive link (internal) | Partially, via admin audit | No |
| Google Sheets with Workspace | Yes, via Activity Dashboard | No |
| Google Sheets with personal Gmail | No | No |
| Pitchwise tracked link | Yes, per recipient | Yes |
FAQ
Can I track who opened an Excel file without them knowing?
Any tracking requires either the recipient to be signed in to an account you can audit or the file to be served through a platform that records access. Pitchwise links are tracked by design, and that is disclosed in the tool. Covert tracking embedded in the file itself is technically possible using VBA macros or tracking pixels, but it is unreliable and raises serious privacy concerns.
Does Google Sheets notify you when someone opens your file?
Not by default. The Activity Dashboard shows historical view data, but Google Sheets does not send you a real-time notification when someone opens your spreadsheet. For that, you need a third-party tool.
What if the investor uses Excel and I send them a Google Sheets link?
They can open a Google Sheets link in any browser without needing a Google account, though editing is limited. If you need them to work in a native Excel file, the tracking options described above apply. If you just need them to review the numbers, a Pitchwise link preserves the spreadsheet view without requiring any specific software.
Does this work for Google Sheets too, not just Excel?
Yes. You can upload a Google Sheets export (as a PDF or spreadsheet) to Pitchwise and share it as a tracked link. The tracking works the same way regardless of the original file format.
