Use the following recommended workflow to track alignment and sequence changes:
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Before starting an editing/alignment session, run 'Track changes' on the alignment you plan to work with and supply an identifier (for example your initials 'YN'). This records the baseline checksums.
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Now edit your sequence data using the various aligners or the ARB sequence editor to adjust your alignment or eventually modify the sequence data itself.
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After finishing, run 'Track changes' again and use a unique suffix such as 'YN-1'. This run compares checksums and adds lines to 'seq_history' for species whose checksums changed.
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To find species affected by a particular session, search the 'seq_history' field with one of these expressions (omit the quotes):
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'/YN-1 ali[^ ]* alignment changed/' -- alignment-only changes
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'/YN-1 ali[^ ]* sequence changed/' -- sequence-data changes
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'/YN-1 ali[^ ]* new/' -- newly imported species
Replace 'YN-1' with your actual session identifier (many users prefer a date-based tag like 'YN-20250910').
You can also search by the timestamp that 'Track changes' inserts (same timestamp for all entries updated in one run).
Note: avoid using wildcards in the middle of expressions, they may match unintended text (found in older history lines).
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