How to View Revision History in Google Docs

I compose my blog posts using Google Docs. In the past, I was actually dumb enough to use Wordpad and lost everything I had done more than once. I love knowing that Docs auto-saves my work every few seconds. I can close the laptop and walk away with confidence, knowing that everything will still be exactly as I left it. I can spell-check continuously… which is amazing, considering I type so fast I tend to make some mistakes in the process. I also happen to love being able to easily check my revision history.

Revision history is not only a good thing for single users like myself: it is an invaluable tool when you have multiple people able to edit a document. Revision History allows you to see who edited your document: renaming files and folders, moves or deletes said folders and files, uploads something to any of your folders and even if they share the work.

Viewing Revision History in Google Docs

Open up your document and select ”File” at the top-left part of the screen.

When you hover the mouse over ”Version History”, you can choose to either name the version as it is in its current state, or select ”See Version History”.

If ”Show Changes” is checked at the bottom-right of the screen, you will be able to see who has done what, just like in the example below:

In the right panel, you can scroll through all the changes that have been made, as well as choose to only view versions that people have named. For instance, if several people within a company are working together on a project, they may be under instruction to name their versions as they stop working. By doing this and choosing named versions only to view, you will know that you are looking at what someone considers to be their finished work.

What other Google Docs questions do you have for me? How long have you been using this phenomenal set of tools?

Happy writing and creating!