Reverting To A Previous Version Of A Document On A Mac

With standard Mac apps like Pages, Numbers and Keynote, you can revert to a previously saved version of the file to retrieve text or items you may have deleted or changed. You can completely revert to the old version, or copy and paste some text from an old version. This also works with TextEdit and some third-party apps.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how you can use the Revert To feature to go back to earlier versions of your document. You can use this to get back items that you've deleted from your documents or things that you've changed.
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So a lot of Mac users don't even know this exists. When you're working in apps like Pages, Numbers, and Keynote every time you save you're saving a version of that document and you can go back and look at older versions. So say if you're writing something and you delete a paragraph and a few days later you want to go back and recover that paragraph, you can. Let me show you how.
Let's start from scratch here and create a blank document in Pages. I'm going to add some text to it. Now that I've done all this work it's probably a good idea for me to save the document. I can use File, Save or Command S to save it. Since this is the first time I'm saving it. Now I'm going to type another line. Now that I've done some work I want to save it again so I'm going to use Command S again. Now I'm going to type a third line. Now my document is getting really long I want to make sure I'm saving it every once in a while. So Command S again. Then a fourth line.
Now I have four lines in the document. It seems like I have the normal document here where I simply save the document and if I open it again I would get back to these four lines of text. But there's actually a lot more going on because every time I saved, I saved a version of the document and I can revert to any of those versions. If I go to File I can see Revert To. There's a few things there. I've got Last Saved. Now since I haven't saved yet after typing the fourth line I can jump right back to the last saved version. I could also go to Browse All Versions. Let's go to that.
You're going to go into an interface that looks a lot like Time Machine. On the left you have the current document. On the right you have this stack of old versions. You can see the most recent saved version only has three lines. I can use these arrows here to go back to previous versions. There's one with two lines. There's with one line and there's the original version there. I can choose any one of these and use the Restore button. What will happen is I will restore to this version of the document. So I'll hit Restore and now I'm back to a version of the document that doesn't have the fourth line.
Now even if you know how to use this there's a lot more functionality here. For instance what happened to that fourth line? Well, it turns out I could go to Revert To, Browse All Versions and it actually saved that version. So if you want to revert back to before you did the Revert To you can. Which makes it a nice safe operation to do. In case you make a mistake you can actually go back to this one.
Another thing you can do is you can Copy and Paste between these. I can click here on this document. You can see it enlarges it but I'm still in this mode here where I've got Done and Restore and I have the other versions back here. But I can actually work in the document. So I can add new stuff. See there's a cursor so I can select things. I can also here and enlarge this. Now you may use this to get a better view of the version of the document. But you can also select something, copy it with Command C, go over here to this version and Paste it in. That's right! You can work on the document while you're in this mode.
Another thing you could do is you can hold the Option key and notice the Restore button here changes to Restore Copy. You can keep this current version, but save this version out as a copy of the document.
A few other things going on. One is you've got this Timeline here on the right which since I just started working on this document there's not much there. But if I've been revising this document for months I could easily jump back to an earlier version. So maybe if I did something on my first draft and I want to bring it back I can easily jump two to three months back and find it.
Another thing to note is that the file sizes are going to remain under control because it's not saving a completely new file each time. It's saving changes. So you have your current document with everything there but it remembers what changes there were between that and the last revision and the revision before that. So instead of having ten different copies of the same file it's actually going to have one copy of the file and then the changes going back in time. So actually the file size is staying quite small.
Now if you save a document like this and you Close it and then you go to Open it again, so I'll open Recent, I've got it here and if I start working on the document, I'll just hit return here, I'll notice that now I have Last Opened. In fact if I start working here and I hit Save and then I start working again, now when I go here I have three options. I have the last saved version, I have the last opened versions, so I can revert all the way back to the point where I opened it even if I saved a dozen times I can jump back to when I opened the file this morning and I can go to Browse All Versions to see everything. 
This works in more places than just Pages. For instance in Keynote you've got Revert To there as well and it works exactly the same way. Also in Numbers you've got it there as well. It's not just those three apps. For instance you can use it in TextEdit. So TextEdit also has those. Technically this is available for lots of other apps to use. One example of a third party app that has implemented it is Pixelmator. So here I have a document with just some squiggles in it and I can go to Revert To and there's Last Saved, Last Opened, Browse All Versions.
So you can see how handy a feature this is but here's what I recommend. Don't wait until the first time you really need this to use it. Practice right now. So open up a document in Pages or maybe if you use Numbers more use that and just create a sample document, save it a bunch of times, close the document and then open the document. Use the Revert To feature and see how it works so the first time you really need it you already have got some experience using it.

Comments: 9 Responses to “Reverting To A Previous Version Of A Document On A Mac”

Jean-Claude

5 years ago

Best explanation I've seen of this feature, which is a great and probably underused feature!

Jan Franklin

After the initial "save," do you really have to "save" again? I find previous versions without the necessity of saving each time I do a new edit. Of course, I quit the app after each subsequent addition/deletion...then open again.

Armando Gutierrez V.

EXCELLENT as usual your videos are really useful and easy to practice, this is a very nice feature and never used before, thanks for sharing. AG

Gary Rosenzweig

Jan: Every time you quit you are saving the document. If you want to save a version without quitting, you can use File, Save.

Mike Ganey

This is the best, most-helpful explanation of this powerful feature. And I've never used it! One use I will try is monthly expense reports. Now I create separate documents with differing names to keep track. I'm thinking of making one template, then saving at the Month level, thus having only one expense report document each year. Great tip, clearly explained.

Caro

Excellent and interesting! The Revert functionality is there on Nisus Writer Pro, too. But doesn't seem to be available on Microsoft Word, which is a pity.

Tom Gifford

Wow - I never knew what this did - thanks!

One question, suppose for privacy purposes, I want to delete all the previous versions and "flatten" the document to only the most current version and remove the ability to see previous versions. Is that possible (and how)?

Tom: Not sure why that situation would ever come up since someone else would need your password to get access to your Mac's user account to view the document in the first place, right?
But if you wanted to get rid of all past revisions, you could always use File, Duplicate (or Save As) to save a new copy of the file. That should be missing all previous revisions. Then delete the original.

Thanks Gary - that makes sense that "Save As" would eliminate the history. It is not so intuitive that "Duplicate" would as I would think that it would duplicate the current version and previous versions. My primary concern was if I emailed the document to someone - in many cases, I would prefer not to share the full version history with the person that I emailed it to.

Comments Closed.

Reverting To A Previous Version Of A Document On A Mac

Comments: 9 Responses to “Reverting To A Previous Version Of A Document On A Mac”

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