Introduction

Microsoft Teams maintains a version history of each file. This enables a user to retrieve an older version in the event they inadvertently change a document or forget to save the document to a new file before making changes when AutoSave is on.

This document explains the version history concept.

Instructions

Simplest Technique using File Explorer

Navigate to the location of the file using File Explorer. Perform a right mouse click and select “OneDrive”, then “Version History” (there is an alternative version history, but this doesn’t work as it is not related to OneDrive, so make sure to use “OneDrive…Version History”):

By clicking on the ellipsis at the right hand side of each version, a user can restore an older version of a document to be the current version, download an old version or delete a version. The screenshot below shows an example for a file with just two versions – a current and previous version:

In the scenario where AutoSave has overwritten a previous version of a document, it is recommended that the changed file be save to a new name, then the correct version of the document is restored from the version history of the old file name.

Old Technique (slightly less easy, but gives a few more options)

Consider the document TestDoc.txt in Microsoft Teams under the Files section of Speakeasy…General:

TestDoc.txt was initially created with the contents “Version 1”.

A change was then made to the document so that it had contents of “This document has been changed to Version 2”.

We can view all versions of the document by performing a right mouse click on the TestDoc.txt file and selecting the “Open in Sharepoint” option. See the screenshot below:

Microsoft Teams is a software layer which sits on top of Microsoft Sharepoint. Whilst Teams does not allow a user to see a document version history, Sharepoint does. This is the same folder, but shown via Sharepoint:

To access the version history, right mouse click again on TestDoc.txt and click the “Version History” option. See the screenshot below:

As stated earlier, there were two versions of this document. The version history will be then be shown:

Each can then be viewed. Try it by clicking on the date link for each of the versions. A menu will appear, as shown below:

Click the View icon to show the contents of version 1:

Click the View icon to show the contents of version 2:

Older versions can be deleted using the “Delete” option, or a previous version can be restored, e.g. click on “Version 1” and click restore. The version history will then show the following:

Version 3 is a new version, restored from version 1, so its contents are correctly restored as: