SharePoint Use Cases

Staccee emailed me with the following problem:

Can you report off of “Comments” entered when documents are checked in/out? If so, any help on how to get them all?
Here is what I am doing: I navigate to a document that needs to be updated. I use the ‘Check Out’ function and then ‘Edit in Microsoft Excel’ function. I make the changes I need and then ‘Check In’ the document. I am prompted at check in to provide ‘Comments’ (it’s not a mandatory field, but I utilize it). I imagine it’s saved to the database somewhere, but I have no idea of what rights/access I need to get to that information. Unfortunately I’m an end user and not an IT member. I’m sure if I had access to the DB I could explain a little better.

No problem Staccee… this one is a simple problem to solve.

• The first thing you need to check if Versioning is turned on for your document library. Go to Document library settings > Versioning Settings to turn it on. (More…).
  • In case you do not have privileges to customize document library settings call your Site Owner to help you with this one
• On the document menu there should be Version History Option and it will show you all previous version along with Check-in comments and time stamps. It will also show who made the change to a document.

Location of Version history option is shown at the following figure:

And this is how version history looks like:

Update: Laura also posted a nice workaround solution in a comment below.

Update from Staccee : Thanks! You rock Toni )