Fix for Google Sheets error message: “Can’t save your changes. Copy any recent changes, then revert to an earlier revision”

If you come across a message that Google Sheets can’t save your sheets and you need to revert to an earlier version, but even the earlier version can’t save, don’t bother doing any of these suggested steps. Clearing cookies won’t help. Disabling extensions won’t help.

Instead, try this (as counterintuitive as it seems): copy and paste your Google Sheets cells into a new Excel workbook. Save the Excel workbook and upload it to Google Drive. Open it with Google Sheets. Save that sheet. Delete your old, non-working sheet.

Posted

August 29, 2017

Uncategorized

alanysiu

Tags:

google drive, google sheets, troubleshooting

Comments

7 responses to “Fix for Google Sheets error message: “Can’t save your changes. Copy any recent changes, then revert to an earlier revision””

Vijay Chandran

January 4, 2018

This works! Thanks Alan. saved a lot of my time.

Reply
Layla Hughes

February 28, 2018

My GoogleDocs worksheet has images in it, so it won’t transfer when I copy and paste.

Reply
1. Alan Siu
  
  March 1, 2018
  
  Well, this is a workaround, not a fix, so you may have to put a little more work into the workaround. Copy and paste the text from your Google Sheet and then, after you upload your Excel workbook to Google Drive, try to manually re-insert the images again.
  
  Reply
  1. E
    
    April 20, 2018
    
    doesn’t help me because I am working on someone else’s sheet.
    
    Reply
Jireh

January 4, 2019

It froze when I tried to copy and when I came back it deleted the recent changes. Can I still retrieve it?

Reply
1. Alan Siu
  
  January 7, 2019
  
  I mean, I’m not Google, so I can’t tell you for sure what’s retrievable and what’s not. Probably the best thing to do would be to look through the version history: File > Version history > See version history.
  
  Good luck!
  
  Reply
Ivan

April 30, 2020

Still working! thanks for the info.

Reply