View audit log reports

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 includes a number of audit reports so that administrators can view the contents of audit logs and sort, filter, and manipulate the data in them to analyze activity across a site collection. Audit reports enable organizations to use the raw data in audit logs to construct a meaningful picture of what actions have or have not occurred in a site collection. The reports can be readily saved in a useful format for review.

The auditing reports enable you to determine:

• Items that have been added to a list or library

• Documents and files that have been viewed and read

• Changes to permissions

• Changes to columns and content types

• Items that have been deleted or restored

• Items that have been copied, moved, checked in, and checked out

• Search queries

• Changes to auditing

View audit log reports

1. On the site collection home page, click Site Actions, point to Site Settings, and then click Modify All Site Settings.

2. In the Site Collection Administration section, select Audit log reports.

3. Select the type of report that you need:

   • Content modifications     Reports changes to content, such as modifying, deleting and checking documents in and out

   • Content type and list modifications     Reports additions, edits, and deletions to content types

   • Content viewing     Reports users who have viewed content on a site

   • Deletion     Reports what content has been deleted

   • Run a custom report     Enables you to specify the filters for a custom report, such as limiting the report to a specific set of events, to items in a particular Web or list, to a particular date range, or to events performed by particular user

   • Expiration and Disposition     Reports all events related to how content is removed when it expires

   • Policy modifications     Reports on events that change the information management policies on the site collection

   • Auditing settings     Reports changes to the auditing settings

   • Security settings     Reports changes to security settings, such as user/group events, and role and rights events

4. After you run reports on audit logs, you can use standard Microsoft Office Excel features to narrow the reports to the information you want. Some ways in which you can analyze and view the log data include:

   • Filtering the audit report for a particular date range

   • Sorting the audit log report

   • Viewing daily retention activity

   • Determining who has viewed or worked on an item and who has downloaded or copied an item

   • Permission history on an item

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