Saving Document Versions

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated July 14, 2018)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003

Depending on your experience with developing complex documents, you may already be familiar with version control. Many companies maintain separate versions of a document at different benchmarks during the development process. For instance, one saved version may be at the first draft stage, another at the second draft stage, and still another at the public comment stage.

In the past, you may have needed to save different versions of your document in different files. Word supports saving multiple versions of your documents within a single file. This can be handy if you need to see a revision history of your document, and it may make your document management chores a bit easier.

To save a version of your document, follow these steps:

Choose Versions from the file menu. Word displays the Versions dialog box. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Versions dialog box.

Click on the Save Now button. Word displays the Save Version dialog box. (See Figure 2.)

Figure 2. The Save Version dialog box.

Enter any comments you want associated with this version. (A good idea is to indicate why you are saving the version.)
Click on OK. Word saves the version.

The version saved by Word is essentially a snapshot of how your document looks when the version was saved. Edits you make to the document in the future do not interfere with the saved version.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (1778) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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What is six minus 3?

2019-03-25 13:59:58

I. S. J.

Thank you for your article. I can not seem to find "Versions from the file menu". I have looked in my save settings

Can you please provide a little more info?

2018-09-13 13:58:06

Joni

Is there something like this for Word 2007? I am editing a complex document and I used to save as... every time I wanted to make changes to the file (for versioning and easy back tracking if something becomes corrupt). I am now using linked text within the same document and every time I Save as.. the document links break. I read somewhere if they are linked to the same document they shouldn't break when the document is saved under a new name but this isn't working for me. I don't know how to set up the links using the relative hyperlink base to always go to the same document if the document name changes. I would like some form of version control within the document so I don't need to save it as a new name and have the links still work.

I also recently edited my libraries so my backups would be easier to set up to only use my libraries and I moved my documents to libraries and now all of my documents are having problems opening. All of them are in my D:\ local drive however it seems like they are acting like they were actually moved which they weren't. Now when I open them the open bar fills for each link in the document even the normal bookmarks so it takes a very long time to open my socuments and if I edit them and try to save them word stops responding and I have to end the process because it never starts responding. Please help. I really appreciate it. I love your site too. I reference it often. Thanks!

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