Accessing Document History on Your Mac

When using Apple apps and some third-party apps you can access a history of previously saved versions of the document. This is handy for reverting to an older version or bringing back delete content.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how Mac Apps save a history of document versions that you can access. 
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When you work with standard Apple apps, like Pages, Numbers, and Keynote or even some 3rd party apps, you have the ability to revert to previous versions of the document you're working on. This means if you make a mistake or delete something you can go back to a previous version, revert to that version or perhaps grab some content from that version to bring it to your current one. Let me show you.
So I'm going to use Pages here as my first example. I'm going to create a blank document in Pages and you could see it hasn't been saved yet. It is just called Untitled. Let's go and Save the document and I'm just going to call this Test. Now I can start creating things in this document. Let's say I write something here and I'm done working for now. So I'll Close the document. Let's say later on I return to it and write something else. Then I close the document again. Now let's go and Open that document again and let's say I delete this first something here as I'm editing and I close it. Then I realize I made a mistake. I shouldn't have deleted that first thing. I'd like to get it back. Well, you can! You can go back to the document like this and you can go to File and there's Revert To. You can see a previous save here and it will show you a time or you can Browse All Versions. Let's Browse All Versions and see what we get. When we do that we get an interface that looks a lot like Time Machine. You see your current document here and you see previous documents here with little arrows that you can use to go through them. If your document saves in iCloud it will actually save these versions in iCloud. You would have to click here to load up the previous version that you're at. So I could go back to a version like this and I can click the Restore button. If I do that it will take the current document and restore it to this version. It will get rid of everything that is new or has been changed or deleted and restore it to this particular version from this time. So let's do that. Click Restore and you can see my document is now back to the state it was before. So I erased any changes I made.
Now there is a second way to do this. Let's say I had other things, more. Let's say I close it and let's say I open it later on and let's say I delete something here but I add more stuff there. Then I close it. Now, if I return to the document later and realize I want that back, the thing that I deleted. Well, I have a problem if I go back to Browse All Versions and look at the previous version and I could see it there. But if I Revert to this version I don't have the new things I added. So what you can do here is you can actually grab content from this interface. So I can click here, it enlarges, I can actually select some content and use Command C to copy. Then I could just click Done, not making any changes. Now I can Command V to paste. So I could paste this back here where I want it or put it in a new location. 
So you have the choice of reverting completely to a previous version or going to a previous version and copying content from it and then using that in the current version of the document by pasting it in there or even just pasting it into a completely new document if you want. 
Now let's switch to Numbers here. I've created a new document in Numbers. Let's go and Save this. Let's call it Test as well. I'll add some numbers in here. I continue working on this document and then when I close it I've created a version that it can revert back to in the future. But what if I want to save a version while I'm working on it. Well, you can do that using File, Save. You may wonder what the point of Save is if you can simply close the document and it automatically saves. Well, the main use for it is to Save a version. So I'm going to click Save here and I've saved it in this state. Let me add some new stuff and then I'm going to Save again. Then I'll add some new stuff here. Now I'll go to Revert To and I'll see Last Saved, Browse All Versions. I'll go to Browse All Versions and I could see the previous version here missing this content. I can go back another version there and you could see the previous one there as well. So there is a good reason to use File, Save or just a quick Command S every once in a while while working. It saves a version that you can revert to. 
So, for instance, if you're about to delete a bunch of stuff that you just wrote in a Pages document or rows that you've added in Numbers spreadsheets it's worth it to do a quick File, Save and then know that you could revert to that version if you needed to. Of course you shouldn't rely on doing that so don't do it if it is important data. But if you get into a habit of always doing Command Save every once in a while while working you'll have a nice version history that you can fall back on if you make a mistake. 
Now you may be asking isn't this going to take up a lot more space than just saving the plain document. Won't a file that has ten versions be ten times the size of a file with no versions. Well, it doesn't actually add that much more to the file because it's not saving the entire document each time. It is just saving changes. So, for instance, if you create a document and add ten lines to it and Save it that should be about the same size as if you add one line, save, second line, save, and so on until you have ten. Because it is just saving each line of text as new content for the document. So as an example here let's start a new Keynote document. I'm going to save this one as Test 1. What I'm going to do here is I'm going to take this first text field here and I'm going to type ten words into it. Like that. I'm going to save. I'm going to close that and I'm going to create a new document, use the same template, and Save this one as Test  2. I'm going to write one word and then Save. Then the second one and then save and continue for all ten words. So now I have essentially the same document but this one has ten versions saved right here that I could go back and look at. But if I go look at the two documents you can see here it is pretty much the same size. There's going to be a tiny little variation when you go down to the byte level but it is not going to be ten times the size. Like it is ten different documents. 
Now Pages, Numbers, and Keynote are, of course, Apple Apps. But the ability to do this is built into macOS. So other apps can do it as well. So, for instance, we go to Pixelmator Pro, a 3rd party app here, and I've got a new document I have saved here. I could go and use a brush here and kind of paint something on the snow and I could save. I could paint something on the snow over here and save and something over here and save. Now if I go to File I see Revert To. I can brows all versions and I could go back and see each version here as I made changes. So it is really up to the 3rd party app developer as to whether or not they incorporate this into their app. 
The one place you won't find this is if you go to an app that doesn't have a document. So, for instance, Notes doesn't have this. That's unfortunate. It would be handy but the thing to keep in mind is Notes doesn't have a document as a File. All of the Notes information is store in a special container just for notes. There are no external files you could access with a dot Notes extension or something like that. The same thing for Contacts, Calendar, and Reminders and all of that. It is just handling its own data. It's not creating different document files. 
Another thing to keep in mind is when you use Save As or Duplicate it doesn't bring along the version. So here I can browse all versions of this Pages document and you could see I've got many here. But if I were to go to File and then Duplicate and Create Test Copy and Save that,  then if I go to File, Revert To there are no older versions here. You could see the arrow is grayed out. Or the same thing if I were to go to File, hold down the Option Key and choose Save As. That is just going to save out a new copy with no versioning there. Of course if you've shared the document with somebody else, go to File, Share and choose Send Copy. That copy isn't going to include the versions either. It is just going to have the current state of the document. In addition if I select this file and duplicate it, I'm going to use Command D to do that in the Finder here. Open Up Duplicate. Then I go to File, Revert To you could see there are no versions there either. So it is only that original file that has the version history.
So a thing to keep in mind is to treat the versions as kind of a backup history. Don't rely on them. If there is something important that you want in a document don't delete it thinking well, I'll just use the older document versions to get it back if I want it back. If it is at all important save it in another document if you want to get it out of the original document. This document version's feature is something to be used in case of emergency. If you accidentally delete something or change something. It is not something you should rely on to store any data that you need. 
Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 2 Responses to “Accessing Document History on Your Mac”

Daniel Clay

2 years ago

Wow! Really great info! Wish I had known this years ago! So simple, but so very helpful. Many times I've wanted something that was deleted or changed, but I never knew this was possible. Great! Thank you so much!

Laurie

This is a good thing to learn. I do a seasonal newsletter and in the past have saved them as different documents (edit 1, 2 or 3, etc). Knowing how to use the document history is going to save me lots of time and it will be a lot less confusing. thanks Gary.

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Accessing Document History on Your Mac

Comments: 2 Responses to “Accessing Document History on Your Mac”

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