How To: Using OneDrive File History to Recover Older Versions of Files

Many of us use some form of cloud storage these days and if you are in the Microsoft ecosystem that means you are likely using OneDrive for that option.

OneDrive is a sync based cloud service so that means if you change, delete, or move a file in one place where you access those files then that action will be duplicated across all of your OneDrive access points. It does not make for a very good backup option compared to full backups however, there is a feature available that provides a short term option to recover previous versions of your files.

Currently OneDrive only supports Office documents for this Version History feature however, this week they announced a change that has started to roll out to consumers that will expand this feature to all file types that you can store on OneDrive and everyone should have this capability later this summer.

According to Microsoft these previous versions of your files on OneDrive will be retained for 30 days and then they will be removed automatically. There is also no action required on your part as the Version History happens automatically for the files you store on OneDrive.

Currently access to the Version History of your OneDrive based files is only available through a web browser although it is very possible the company might look to make these available on your local systems down the road as they implement OneDrive Files On-Demand in the upcoming Fall Creators Update.

Here is a walkthrough on how to access and use the Version History feature on OneDrive.

After opening up your web browser and heading to www.onedrive.com you will be prompted to log in with your Microsoft Account. Once you are logged, in browse to the directory that contains the file you are working with.

Now just move your mouse over the file and right click for the context menu:

The context menu will have an entry for Version History so just click on that option to open a new window with this file displayed along with its Version History summary.

Over on the right hand sidebar you will see the current version entry is highlighted and that is the version displayed in the browser window. Below that you will see the other versions of the file that are available. Just click on one of those to see that document displayed.

For easy comparison you can see that this older version has one less line at the top compared to the current version. Over on the left sidebar you can now see two new options for this version of the file - Restore or Download.

Clicking Restore will make this version of the document the current version. Download will allow you to download a copy of this previous version of the file to your local storage.

Here is the oldest version of this file that is available through Version History and it will have the same options for Restore or Download just like other versions.

If you choose to use the Restore option then the version of the file that was previously marked as the Current Version will be moved into the Version History as the most recent version of the document. You can now handle that file in the same manner as other versions with options to Restore or Download as necessary.