Did You Know Most Mac Apps Keep Versions of Your Documents as You Work?

ByEmily Dolloff

We all make mistakes, which is why Undo exists. Immediately choose Edit > Undo or press Command-Z to undo your last change. Most Mac apps support multiple levels of Undo, so you can keep pressing Command-Z to revert change after change. However, suppose you delete a table in your Pages document, but 30 minutes and many changes later, you decide you want it back. Undo won’t help because you want to keep all the other interim changes, and Time Machine backups may not help because a backup may not have occurred at the right time.

Since OS X 10.7 Lion, Mac apps have been able to take advantage of a built-in Apple technology called versioning to save users from such situations. Apps that support versioning create a separate version of each document every time you save manually or the app auto-saves, at least once per hour. You can browse through all those versions in a Time Machine-like interface and copy data from a previous version or revert the current document to a previous state.

Some cross-platform apps, and those with a long history and legacy architecture, such as Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, don’t support versioning, but most modern document-centric apps do. You can identify version-capable apps by the presence of a Revert To command in the File menu.

How Versioning Works

As you work, whenever a document is saved, either automatically by its app or because you chose File > Save or reflexively pressed Command-S, the previous version is added to a database of versions stored in a hidden folder on the same volume. When a file is deleted, all its versions are removed, too, so there’s no worry about wasting storage space on long-deleted files.

When you discover you need to recover some data from an older version of a file, you choose File > Revert To > Browse All Versions, which opens a Time Machine-like browser for exploring all the previous versions. On the right, you can click the arrows to scroll through previous versions, comparing them visually against the current one on the left. A few apps provide additional ways of comparing versions.

Once you’ve found the version you want, you can try copying the desired content and pasting it into the current version of your document on the left—depending on the app and type of document, you may not even have to leave the version browser.

If copying and pasting doesn’t work, you can instead click Restore to revert the document to that previous version. Unlike Time Machine, the version browser doesn’t ask if you want to overwrite the current version, so if you aren’t sure you want a wholesale reversion, press Option to change the button to Restore a Copy. That opens a separate copy of the document in the app so you can pick and choose what you want to move from the old version back into the current version.

More Versioning Details

Although versioning is easy to use, there’s quite a bit going on behind the scenes, which can generate some questions:

  • What about copies of a document? Copies of a document, such as you would make using File > Duplicate, File > Save As, or in the Finder, are different files from the versioning perspective and lose access to the original file’s versions.
  • Is iCloud Drive supported? iCloud Drive maintains its own version database, so although you may have to click a Load Version link to see a particular version when browsing past versions, they should all be accessible.
  • Are files shared between my Macs versioned? Versions are stored at the top level of the document’s volume, so while it works with files stored on an external drive that moves between Macs, files shared between Macs over a network or using a file-sharing service like Dropbox will have different versions on each Mac, based on where the file was open when it was saved.
  • Are there any privacy or security risks to versioning? The version database is completely locked down and better protected than regular documents on your Mac. Also, if you open a confidential file but close it without making any changes or saving, it won’t be added to the version database.

No one expects to make mistakes, but if you do, macOS’s versioning may save you from having to re-create work. Look for that File > Revert To menu in your favorite apps to see if they support versioning, and if they do, give it a try so you’ll know how to use it if you ever need it.

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

Social Media: If you ever regret making a change too long ago to revert using Undo, try the versioning capabilities in many macOS apps that let you view, copy data from, and revert to previous versions of a document.

Similar Posts

  • Where’s my AirTag?!

    Java is an active dog and quite the leaper.  We put an AirTag on his collar just so we could track him and…

  • Keep Your Passwords!

    You have a password for the online banking, one for your Apple ID, one to log into your retirement amount. Your password for your bank has to have have at least one numeric number, but can’t start with a number and it can’t have any more than two of the same characters found in your username. Your retirement account must include at least 3 numbers and one special character but they can’t be consecutive.

    Does this sound familiar? In the perfect world we would only need one password, but unfortunately for security purposes and as hackers get better at what they do password strength has become critical and part of our everyday lives. The hassle with this is that most sites have their own sets of rules for password strength leaving many of us to peck away at our keyboards or devices in a sometimes endless game of “remember how you manipulated your favorite password 16 different ways and can’t remember if your banking site used the password with the capitalization or the one with the ampersand”.

    p{text-align: center;}. !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4644.jpg!

    For a very long time I will admit my method of keeping track of my usernames and passwords was the stickies program on my Mac, much to the dismay of our IT manager! While stickies are easily accessed they are not secure and I do not recommend this method. Where you should keep them is in your keychain. You can access your keychain through applications and then utilities. Once you are in your keychain you can manually add preferred sites, accounts and passwords you wish to store. Another huge benefit is secure notes. Secure notes allow you store additional confidential information. Keychain is safe and secure because in order to view any of the passwords stored there you need to enter your administrator password. Within keychain you can make sure to safely and securely keep your passwords, and when you forget if you needed that capitalization or ampersand in your password you can simply open keychain and enter into the search field the website for which you need to confirm the password.

    Now what if you don’t have a mac? The loss of passwords, and most often your Apple ID password is a huge concern with users of iOS devices only. Luckily there is an easy solution for that, iCloud and “iCloud keychain.”:https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204085 Simply go to settings, iCloud and then select keychain. Your iOS device will begin to store your logins and websites. Additionally you can add specific websites and passwords manually to your phone or iPad under **safari** and then selecting **passwords**. This is also where you would look if you can’t remember login information.

    Recording safely your logins and passwords is an often overlooked step, especially when users of iOS devices accidentally have the device damaged or lost. Saving your passwords safely and using iCloud keychain can avert your being logged out of accounts.

  • Make the Most of Visual Intelligence on the iPhone

    The “visual intelligence” aspect of Apple Intelligence leverages the artificial intelligence capabilities of your iPhone to make what you see through the iPhone’s…

  • Lift Objects from Photos on the iPhone

    Have you ever wanted to extract an object from a photo for use in another context? Starting with iOS 16 on a relatively…