That feature has gone away and the only way you can retrieve previous versions of a document is through the Auto-Save feature or by accessing unsaved documents, if available.īy default, Word automatically saves your document at certain intervals. Word used to have a formal versioning feature that allowed you to save different versions of a document within the document itself. You can also use OneDrive at any point in the collaboration process to provide access to the document for other reviewers. Once all changes have been made, the necessary comparisons made, and combining of documents done, you can easily share your document using Microsoft OneDrive.
We will show you how to merge two versions of the same document and also how to easily merge two different documents, in case multiple authors have worked on separate parts of a document. In addition to comparing documents, you can combine documents after comparing them. We will show you how to use this feature and how to read the results of the comparison. Word contains a comparison tool that allows you to compare two files, as long as they have different file names. If multiple people have worked on different copies of the same file, instead of using the Track Changes feature on one copy of the file, you can compare the two versions of the file to see the differences.
We will show you an alternative you can easily add to Word for free that will provide this capability. However, there is no formal versioning feature in Word. You can also open recent unsaved documents.
In Word 2013, the only way you can access previous versions of a document in Word is to open previous automatically saved (autosaved) versions of the document. The Versions feature in Word was removed in recent versions of Word. Versioning, Comparing, and Combining Documents.Restricting and Protecting Documents and Templates.Using Comments to Indicate Changes in a Document.Keeping Track of Changes Made to a Document.Using Templates to Ensure Common Layout and Formatting.