By Julie Bays, OBA Practice Management Advisor

My friend Rachel Edwards, a Practice Management Attorney with the Oregon State Bar Professional Liability Fund, recently shared five useful Microsoft Word tips for legal professionals. Her first tip explains how to use Restrict Editing when you want to control what a client, colleague or someone else can change in a document.

But sometimes the person you need to protect the document from is yourself.

I have learned this the hard way more than once. AutoSave continually saves changes to Word documents stored in OneDrive or SharePoint. That is usually helpful; until you open an existing document, start editing and realize you meant to create a new version instead of changing the original.

Fortunately, Version History may let you recover the earlier document.

Using Version History in Desktop Word

  1. Open the document in Word.
  2. Select File > Info.
  3. Select Version History. A pane will open showing earlier versions of the document, including the dates and times they were saved.
  4. Select an earlier version to open it in a separate window.
  5. Review the document carefully to confirm that it is the version you want.
  6. Select Restore to make that version the current version.

In newer versions of Microsoft 365, you may also be able to select the document’s filename at the top of the Word window and choose Version History. Do not be surprised if your screen looks slightly different.

In Word for the web, select File > Version History, choose the version you want to review and then select Restore. Version History is available for documents stored in OneDrive or SharePoint; it does not work the same way for documents saved only on a computer or traditional file server. Microsoft provides additional instructions for viewing previous versions of Office files.

Version History is not a substitute for sensible filenames and good document-management procedures. It is, however, an extremely useful safety net. For lawyers, Version History is more than a convenient safety net. Recovering an earlier version may mean restoring important language, client instructions or carefully negotiated provisions that AutoSave faithfully but unintentionally saved over.