See the history of changes made to a file
If you want to see all of the changes you and others have made to a document, spreadsheet, presentation, or drawing, you can check your revision history. You can view and revert back to earlier versions of your file and see which person made specific edits.
To see revision history for a file, follow these steps:
- Open a document, spreadsheet, presentation, or drawing.
- Click the File menu and select See revision history.
- Click a time stamp in the panel on the right to see a previous version of the file. You’ll also see the people who edited the file below the time stamp, and the edits that each person made is shown in the color that appears next to their name.
- If you want to revert to the version you're currently viewing, click Restore this revision.
- If you'd like to return to the current version of your document to continue editing, click the X in the upper right of the 'Revision history' panel.
Reverting your document to a previous version doesn’t eliminate any versions of your file, but it moves this previous version to the top of your revision history.
See your edits in more detail
Revisions are grouped into short time periods to make it easier for you to see the slight differences between previous document versions. If you want to see more fine-grained revisions, click Show more detailed revisions in the lower right corner of the revision history panel.
Unable to see a previous version of your file?
The revisions for your file may occasionally be merged, based on the age of the file and/or the size of the revisions, to save storage space. Learn more about this process, which is called revision pruning.