How in the Tech

Adding Version Control to your Documents in Word 2007

By Adam Myers ⋅ June 10, 2009 ⋅ Tags: Microsoft Word

If you are a power user in Microsoft Word you’ve likely suffered at least one catastrophic failure that resulted in hours of lost editing. Moving forward, you’ve learned from that tragic event and now you save early and save often. You may even take it one step further and create copies or iterations of your document on each save – just in case the document somehow becomes corrupt. It’s a fantastic habit to have but unfortunately, and maybe even understandably, not one you acquire until after your first disaster. Having multiple versions of a file that you can go back to is the basic principle behind version control. This practice is pretty user-intensive however, at least with respect to Microsoft Word.

AutoHistory for Word 2007 is an extremely useful tool for all users that lessens the burden of version control. Once installed, the free plugin creates backups of your .doc files on each save. Each save is timestamped so that you can quickly rollback to that version when necessary. This is really a feature that should be standard in Office; it’s that useful.

1. Download and install AutoHistory.
2. Enable the functionality in Word 2007 but clicking the View tab on the ribbon. Enable the checkbox next to Show/Hide History.



3. From the AutoHistory side panel you can then: View, Recover, Compare, or Delete the selected history file.