Know Who Changed a File in Google Drive with Apps Script

Google Drive maintains a history of all edits made to a file and this information comes if you are trying to figure out who modified the files in your Google Drive. You can know the date and time when a file was modified, the name of the user who made the edit and their email address is available as well.

To get started, you need to enable the Advanced Google Drive API in the Google Services section of your Google Apps Script project. You can use the method to track revisions made to your Google Sheets, Presentations, Documents and other native Google Formats. The script can be further enhanced to send you email alerts as soon as a file is updated in Drive.

Also see: Get your Google Drive Activity Report

/* Credit: +Jean-Pierre Verhulst */

function listFileRevisions(fileID) {
  var editList = [],
    revisions = Drive.Revisions.list(fileID);

  if (revisions.items && revisions.items.length > 0) {
    for (var i = 0; i < revisions.items.length; i++) {
      var revision = revisions.items[i];
      editList.push([
        revision.id,
        new Date(revision.modifiedDate).toLocaleString(),
        revision.lastModifyingUserName,
        revision.lastModifyingUser.emailAddress,
      ]);
    }
    Logger.log(editList);
  } else {
    Logger.log('No file revisions found.');
  }
}

Amit Agarwal is a web geek, solo entrepreneur and loves making things on the Internet. Google recently awarded him the Google Developer Expert and Google Cloud Champion title for his work on Google Workspace and Google Apps Script.

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