Someone has saved over three hours of your work, or a spreadsheet that was fine on Tuesday is now a mess of broken formulas. Almost nobody knows this, and it saves a lot of afternoons: Microsoft 365 quietly keeps earlier versions of every file in SharePoint, Teams and OneDrive, and you can put one back yourself in about a minute.

Try this first

1. Find the file in the browser. Open the document library in SharePoint, or the Files tab in the Teams channel, or OneDrive on the web. You need the web view for this, not File Explorer.
2. Open version history. Click once on the file to select it (do not open it), then click the three dots next to the file name and choose Version history. A panel opens listing every saved version with a date, a time and the name of whoever saved it.
3. Look before you leap. Click the three dots next to a version and choose Open to read that version without changing anything. Work backwards from the most recent until you find the one you want. AutoSave means there can be a lot of versions from a single afternoon, so use the timestamps and the names to narrow it down.
4. Restore it. With the right version found, click the three dots next to it and choose Restore. That version becomes the current file.
5. Check the result and tell whoever else uses the file. Anything they typed after the point you restored to is no longer the current version, so a quick message avoids confusion.

You can also do this without leaving Word or Excel: click File, then Info, then Version history. Same list, same result.

Nothing is destroyed when you restore

This is the part that puts people at ease. Restoring does not delete the newer versions. It takes a copy of the old version and puts it on top of the pile, so the version you just replaced is still sitting in the list underneath. If you restore the wrong one, open version history again and restore a different one. You cannot paint yourself into a corner.

If that didn’t fix it

A few situations need us:

• Version history is greyed out or missing. Usually the file is not in SharePoint or OneDrive at all - it may be on a local drive, a USB stick or an old mapped network drive, where no versions are kept. Tell us where the file lives and we will tell you what recovery is possible.
• The file has been deleted, not overwritten. Check the recycle bin in the SharePoint site first, then ask us.
• A whole folder or library needs rolling back. If many files were damaged at once, there is a library-wide restore that takes the whole library back to a point in the recent past. That one is ours to run, not yours.
• You need a version from months ago. Libraries keep a set number of versions rather than an unlimited history, so very old versions may have rolled off. Ask early rather than late.

How to make this easier next time

Leave AutoSave on, keep files in SharePoint or Teams rather than on the desktop, and stop making copies called Budget FINAL v3 Ben edit. Version history only works on the one real file. Every copy someone takes is a file with its own separate history, which is exactly the situation this feature exists to prevent.

Still stuck?

Log a ticket at portal.yougrowit.com.au or email support@yougrowit.com.au. If it is stopping you working right now, call 03 9028 4358.

Support hours are Monday to Friday, 8:30am to 5:30pm Melbourne time, excluding Victorian public holidays.