How to Recover Previous Versions of Pages, Word, and Other Mac Documents
iWork Lets You Browse All Versions of Your Documents
There are plenty of reasons why you would want to use iWork instead of Microsoft Office. It has lots of advantages, but the most popular one for the current discussion is because of its in-built versioning. Every time you save changes to a document, iWork creates an archived copy that you can get back at a later date.
There are two ways to recover previous versions of your Pages, Numbers, or Keynotes documents. One is used when you are using the Mac application, while the other one is for the iCloud website.
How to Recover to Previous iWork Documents in the App
To see the past versions of your current document that are currently available, open it up in the Pages, Numbers, or Keynote application that is on your Mac. Then go to File > Revert To > Browse All Versions from the menu bar.
A screen would come up with past versions of your current document. Use the Up and Down arrows to go over the previous versions to find what you are looking for.
When you find the document version that you want to recover, click on Restore.
Microsoft Office Uses AutoRecovery to Protect Your Documents
Microsoft 365 also keeps previous versions of your Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. However, this would only be made possible if you save your documents in OneDrive, which allows you to turn on the AutoSave feature as well.
If you do not use OneDrive, you can still recover older versions of the documents using the AutoRecovery or the temporary files that are on your Mac. We would explain each of these methods below.
How to Recover Previous Versions of Documents in Microsoft Office
If you keep your files saved in OneDrive, it is easy to get back older versions of your Excel, Word, or PowerPoint documents. The process is the same, not minding whether you make use of apps on your Mac or the Office website.
To start, open up the latest version of the document that you want to recover.
On a Mac PC, go to File > Browse Version History from the menu bar. On the Microsoft Office website, go to File > Info > Previous Versions.
After doing so, you will see a panel displaying all the saved versions of your current document that are tracked. Use the timestamps to choose which one you want to recover. Click it to preview the file, then choose to Restore if it is the version that you want.
Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides Are Easy to Recover
Unlike Apple’s and Microsoft office suites, Google Docs would only let you access your documents on a Mac by using a web browser. The advantage of this is that you would never need to worry about clicking Save because Google does that for you automatically. Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets also keep previous versions of your documents for recovery.
Open up a web browser on your Mac and go to the Google Docs website, then load the document that you want to recover. In the top-left, click on File > Version history > See version history.
Then go through the various versions of your document that opens the panel on the right. Google Docs would highlight and color the changes that are made by each user in a different color. So it is easy to find the versions of your document from before any particular person made any changes.
Click on each version to see a preview of it, then click on Restore this version at the top of the screen to restore it.
