Versioning in Microsoft SharePoint List or Library Explained
Content has great value in both online and offline platforms. Microsoft SharePoint delivers great control over content by providing versioning feature for lists or libraries. By enabling versioning, the user can ensure that all items inside a list and files in a SharePoint library can be stored, tracked or restored whenever any changes are applied to them. This is most helpful when you want to revoke a change made and go back to an old version.
Users with permission to manage lists can enable or disable versioning for a library. Versioning can be enabled for all kinds of files that can be stored in a library and for list items such as custom lists, calendars etc. For Office 365 customers, versioning is by default enabled when creating OneDrive for Business libraries. As it can save up to 500 versions of a document, it eliminates the chances of losing important documents or data.
Track complete history of a file
One of the biggest highlights of versioning is in tracking the changes made to a file. It shows who made the changes and when. It is possible to track when and who made changes to the properties of a file too. Version history displays all essential information to track the file comprehensively. When people check files to a library, they can add comments for others to view.
Restore/View previous versions
Mistakes and mishaps can happen unexpectedly. When it happens to documents and files, this can become more disastrous sometimes. With the restore facility, you can now replace a corrupt file with its previous version. Once restored, the restored version becomes the current version of the file.
You can also view previous versions of the file, even when you don’t want to restore. There is also an option to compare two versions of a file to find out the differences. For this, you need to access version history within a Microsoft Office Document.
When are versions created?
Versioning takes place when a file or list item is generated or uploaded for the first time. Versions are also created when properties of a file or list are changed. Each time when user access, edit and save the file, a new version of the file is created.
