Named versions: What you'll love about the new Version history for Google Docs

Post date: Aug 16, 2017 4:22:46 PM

Say goodbye to ‘Revision history’... and welcome the new ‘Version history’ UI

Already available for Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, Revision history was a key feature for any collaborative or individual projects within your organization.

Essentially you could look back to any former version of your work and restore an older one if needed:

A similar feature is also available in Google Drive: ‘Manage versions’ lets you easily check the different versions of a file uploaded to your Drive folder.

Note: Manage versions in Drive is only available for external file formats (like PDF, MS Word, images,...), not for Google Docs, Sheets etc.

To make it consistent with this Drive feature, ‘Revision history’ has been renamed to ‘Version history’ in Google Docs UI.

Name the different versions of your document and refer easily to a specific version

With this name change, Version history also comes with two great options:

• • The possibility to name specific versions / revisions of your document,

  • and the ability to only display those named versions when browsing the history

Naming a specific version of your document is very helpful to control your own work or your team members’. No need to bother searching through the right versions by dates anymore! Just choose a relevant name for the different versions of your document ("first draft", "before review", "published", "updated because of security change"), refer to them easily and save a lot of time in your workload.

Once you named some versions, you can decide to only show named versions in Version history (via the toggle button). You will then get a clear interface showing only the useful versions:

If you need a review of your Doc by your colleagues, you can save your current version (before suggestions) by naming it ‘Draft’ for example. Using the new feature from Google Docs that lets you preview the document as if you accepted or rejected all suggestions, you can then save a new version (eg. ‘Final version’) of your Google Docs after validating all suggestions.

With the new naming option in Version history, collaborating with your team has never been easier. You are guaranteed that your projects will move forward smoothly, without risking losing sight of former versions. Keep track and better control of your documents and gain productivity in your projects.