A few years ago, collaborating on documents wasn’t as easy as it is today. People have to exchange documents via email, maintain multiple local copies, track changes, and maybe even use a version history table within the document itself.
Then came the era of cloud services, allowing teams to work on single versions of documents on single platforms. It’s still not so easy to maintain versions. However, if you are a user of the MS Office suite, you will be happy to know how to restore and restore older versions if your work is synced with OneDrive.
Cool Tip: Here’s how you can configure MS Office document autosave to save on OneDrive instead of local device.
This is different from the recovery options you see on your local machine when you lose documents due to some glitch.
Find older versions on OneDrive
Step 1: Sign in to OneDrive and find the file you need to restore or restore from an earlier version. I’m saying older versions because the current version will be the latest (whether you or someone else with access to do so has been modified).
Step 2: Hover over the file and select it by ticking the checkbox at the top right of the file icon.
Step 3: There are two ways to display version history and details. Right click on the file and press Version History or click Manage from the ribbon and select Version History.
Clicking on the icon brings up a new browser tab with the latest version of the file on the right and available versions in the left column.
Step 4: To view the contents of an older version document, click on the corresponding entry below Older versions part.
Should you download or restore?
When selecting an older version file, you will see two options – Restore And Download. It is clear from the name, Restore will restore the selected version to the current version. That also pushes the latest version into the older version queue. And, the restored version is not deleted (it remains in the list, as you may need to restore).
What’s even more interesting is that the selected restored version will sync with all local copies of the connected devices.
Downloading is also a very thoughtful choice. Sometimes you may not want to restore the latest document. Instead, you may just need a local copy of the previous version, or you may want to fork a different version than the previous one. In such cases, downloading works best for you.
Hot Tip: How to selectively sync folders and files between devices and OneDrive in the cloud.
Conclusion
Versioning of documents plays an important role when multiple people (part of a project or team) are working together. Not all changes are permanent or final. Multiple rounds of review and revision are often required before the team comes to a document that is unanimously accepted. MS Office Online and OneDrive give you the right platform to track and manage your version history.
Categories: How to
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/
