How to Recover Older Version of an Existing File

During work, we often make changes to existing files and save them. But sometimes we might want the previous versions of a file before we made some unwanted changes. If you got your data back from a data recovery tool, there is no way you can get the previous versions of your file. Today we will see how you  can recover the previous versions of  an existing file in three possible ways.

Windows’ previous versions tool

Windows has an inbuilt tool that saves old versions of your data files automatically. But the problem is this tool works only in a very sew cases.

To make use of this tool, go to the folder containing the file to which you need an older version. Right-click the required file and select Restore previous version. If  the option is not available, you can select Properties and click the Previous Versions tab. 

Unfortunately, when in my use the tool almost never saved a previous version of the file i wanted. The reason for his is, Windows saves these changes only when a restore point is created, and restoring point is created rarely. There are other complicated configuration issues that prevent Windows from backing up old versions.

In simple words this method may not work for sure but should be given a try as it is pretty easy to do.

Cloud-based syncing and storage

If you use a service such as Google Drive or Dropbox, and the file we need is located where it will automatically be uploaded to that service’s cloud server, probably  you’re in luck. Most of the cloud  services save older versions of your saved files for a month.

Cloud services like Dropbox easily lets you recover old versions of files. Right-click the file you need and select Use previous versions in the Dropbox section of the menu.

This takes you to a webpage where you can find many versions of the file selected. You can download the correct version needed for you.

In Google Drive recovering an old version of a file from is a little bit harder. Go to drive.google.com, then click My Drive on the left pane  if it was not already selected. Find the file you need. Now click the three-dot menu icon which you can find on the toolbar and select Manage versions.

You can work the same way with Microsoft’s OneDrive, but it has a big problem: OneDrive only saves older versions of files with Office file formats. In simple words, you can retrieve an older version of a .docx file, but not a .png.

If you use cloud-based applications to work with your files, these may also save versions. For example, in Google Docs, you can select File > See revision history  and have a look at the older versions that are available.

Backup programs

There’s absolutely no excuse for not backing up your files, and file backup programs are worth the name and save many versions of your files.

For example, if you use built-in  Windows 10’s File History file backup tool, you can find that the Previous Versions tool we discussed initially works fine as long as you plug in your backup drive.

Hope this article helped you. Leave a comment below on what topic you want to hear from us in  the articles to come.