Version Control in MS Word

Did you know that Word has internal version control? I just stumbled across the feature this week. It is not team version control but it is version control for the individual user. I use Word 2003 and like I said, I just found this feature so I don’t know how long it has been there. How do you get at it? Well, off if the file menu, there is a Versions choice that brings up this dialog:



You can save as many versions of the document that you would like. Anytime you want to get back to them, you select the one you want and open it. Once the document is open, you can Save As another document and start editing that version. I did a little digging and found that all versions of the document are stored in the same DOC file and only the changes are saved in each version rather than the entire document.

I think I will definitely be able to use feature when writing my session white papers. On many occasions I have scrapped entire sections of the paper only to decide later that I really would like to include it. Pretty cool.