FolderLoggerVBA

Excel VBA folder change tracker with baselines

Folder Change Logger is an Excel VBA utility that monitors a chosen folder and all of its subfolders to detect file system changes between runs. It works by creating and maintaining baseline snapshots of the folder contents and comparing each new scan against the previous state.

How it works

Folder selection
The folder to monitor is defined directly in Excel at:

Main!B2


No dialog boxes are used. The macro always reads the path from this cell.

Recursive scan
When the macro runs, it scans:

The selected folder

All subfolders

All nested levels

For each accessible file, it records:

Full path

File name

File size

Last modified timestamp

Baseline comparison
The current scan is compared against the previous baseline stored in the _Baseline sheet:

New files → Added

Missing files → Removed

Size or timestamp changes → Modified

Unchanged files → Ignored

Permission-safe handling
Files or folders that cannot be accessed (for example, due to permission restrictions) are skipped without stopping the scan.

These skips are remembered in the _SkipBaseline sheet.

A skipped item appears in the report only once, unless the underlying error type changes.

Reporting
Results are written to the Main sheet starting at row 10.

The report is cleared at the beginning of each run.

Only meaningful changes are shown.

Repeated noise is automatically filtered out.

State persistence
Two visible baseline sheets are maintained:

_Baseline – tracks known accessible files

_SkipBaseline – tracks previously skipped paths and error codes

These sheets allow the tool to remember state across runs without external files.

Typical use cases

Tracking document changes in shared folders

Monitoring project directories over time

Auditing file updates without external tools

Working in restricted environments where some paths are inaccessible

Notes and behavior

File moves and renames appear as Removed + Added

The scan is read-only; no files are modified

The macro always finishes on the Main sheet

Designed to be transparent, deterministic, and repeatable