How to see who changed a HubSpot property, and when

By Caner Kaya, Kayabyte

A dropdown option disappears, a property gets relabelled, a new field shows up that nobody remembers creating, and a workflow or report quietly breaks. HubSpot keeps two different kinds of history, and it helps to know which one you need:

• Value history: what a property’s value was on a record (for example, a contact’s lifecycle stage last week).
• Settings history: changes to the property itself (its label, type, group or dropdown options), which is what breaks forms, workflows and integrations.

This guide covers both, starting with what HubSpot has built in.

Value history on a record (all plans)

On any record, you can see the history of a property’s values: who or what changed it and when (HubSpot guide).

To see value history across many records, export it: go to Settings > Properties, hover over the property, click More and choose Export property history. Tick Include Source Information to see which user or tool made each change (HubSpot guide). Limits worth knowing:

• HubSpot keeps up to 45 revisions per contact property and up to 20 per company, deal, ticket and custom object property.
• Dates in the export are in UTC.
• You need CRM export permission and Edit All permission for the object.

This tells you about values on records. It doesn’t tell you that someone deleted an option from the dropdown itself.

Settings history: the audit log (Professional and Enterprise)

HubSpot’s centralized audit log includes Property updates and Conditional property options on Professional and Enterprise accounts; Starter accounts don’t get those categories (HubSpot guide).

1. Click the settings icon in the top navigation bar.
2. In the left panel, under Account Management, click Audit Logs.
3. Filter by Category, Action, Modified by and Date, or click Export report to have the current view emailed to you.

Good to know:

• You need Super Admin permissions to view or export audit logs.
• The All Logs view covers the last 30 days.
• The log only records actions taken by HubSpot users. HubSpot says changes not made by a user aren’t shown there.

Settings at a glance: the property export (all plans)

For a quick check of one property, go to Settings > Properties, hover over it, click More and choose Export property definition. The ZIP file includes the property’s details and the user who created it, and for contact, company, deal and ticket properties, the last updated time and update source. Export all properties gives the same basics for every property, with its options and fill rate (HubSpot guide).

That’s a snapshot of today, not a history. To spot what changed, you’d have to export regularly and compare the files yourself.

Undo a change

• Archived properties go to the Archived tab in property settings and can be restored for 90 days; after that HubSpot deletes them permanently.
• Archived dropdown options can be restored from the Archived options tab in the property’s Field type settings (HubSpot guide).
• Deleted options or a changed label have no built-in undo. You put them back by hand, which is easy if you know exactly what the old definition was.

Where the built-in options stop

• Free and Starter accounts have no audit log of property settings changes.
• No change list for settings. Even with the audit log, there’s no simple view that says “these 3 options were removed from Lead source on Tuesday, and here’s what the list looked like before”.
• Beyond 30 days you’re working from exports.
• No alert. Nobody is told when a property that a workflow or integration depends on changes.

An app that keeps a nightly change log

Full disclosure: I make an app for this, Bulk Property Import & Export. It mainly creates properties and options in bulk from a CSV, and it also keeps a change log of your property settings:

• Every night it compares all property definitions with the night before and lists properties and options that were added, changed or archived, with the HubSpot user ID when HubSpot provides it.
• You can filter by object, period or property name.
• On Free, the log shows the last 30 days, on any HubSpot plan, including the free CRM.
• On Pro, it keeps 12 months, can send a weekly email digest of changes, and can put a property’s previous definition back with one click (with a preview first).

What it doesn’t do: it doesn’t track values on records (use HubSpot’s property history for that), and since it checks once a night, a change that’s made and undone on the same day won’t show. It only asks for property settings permissions, so it never sees contact, company, deal or ticket records.

Pro is free for life for the first 25 accounts. See the setup guide.

Quick answers

Can I see who deleted a dropdown option in HubSpot? On Professional and Enterprise, check the audit log under property updates (Super Admins only). On other plans there’s no built-in record of it.

How far back does the audit log go? The All Logs view shows the last 30 days.

Can I restore a deleted property? If it was archived less than 90 days ago, yes, from the Archived tab in property settings.

Questions or corrections: support@kayabyte.dev. HubSpot is a registered trademark of HubSpot, Inc. Kayabyte is an independent developer and is not affiliated with HubSpot.