How to restore a folder’s previous version in Windows 7

Posted on June 9, 2009 at 5:15 am

In Windows 7 there is a new feature that will let you restore previous versions of the contents of a folder.  For example, if you have a folder containing some files from last week, then you update the contents of the folder this week, you can still go back to the old version of the files.

This new feature is called restoring previous versions.  Previous versions are either copies of files and folders created by Windows Backup or copies of files and folders that Windows automatically saves as part of a restore point.

You can use previous versions to restore files and folders that you accidentally modified or deleted, or that were damaged. Depending on the type of file or folder, you can open, save to a different location, or restore a previous version.

Note: If you modify a file several times in one day, only the version that was current when the restore point or backup was made is saved as a previous version.

To restore from a previous version, right click a folder then choose Restore previous versions.

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You’ll see a list of available previous versions of the file or folder. The list will include files saved on a backup (if you’re using Windows Backup to back up your files) as well as restore points.

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Before restoring the previous version select the version first and click Open.  This way you can check if the version you want is correct before you restore it.  Once you checked that it is the right version click the restore button and it will be restored to it’s original location.

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Be careful when using restore because this cannot be undone.

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Once restored, verify the contents by exploring the folder.  This is a big improvement from XP since previously you had no way of doing this without a third party versioning tool or without Windows Server 2003.

Ben Carigtan shows you how it’s done.

» Filed Under Windows 7

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Comments

9 Responses to “How to restore a folder’s previous version in Windows 7”

  1. Martin said on : June 17th, 2009 at 10:22 am

    Hi Ben, a tip for your readers, if you’d like to have access to every version of a file which has been saved, and not just the version that existed when Vista did the last backup, see http://neveroverwrite.com. I designed it after feeling slightly let down by the Vista feature as it would miss the changes I made more regularly to my files. :)


  2. John Blisset said on : February 10th, 2010 at 4:56 am

    Hi, this feature NEVER worked for me. I activate all options, all services (shadow copy) but it never worked. I never saw files listed in Previous Version Tab. I recommend Rollback Rx or Comodo Time Machine, but NOT to trust in Windows 7 Previous Versions feature. It’s bugged.


  3. Sylvia said on : February 20th, 2010 at 4:21 pm

    You’re out of your mind. This feature works quite well. Maybe you need to go buy a mac.


  4. Ravi said on : March 12th, 2010 at 12:12 am

    It’s very really very interesting for me and also became helpful because some data was deleted from my one of folder and that was very important. When I searched information about it on net. It helped me and now my data is safe.


  5. Bob Brandon said on : April 26th, 2010 at 5:30 pm

    I also have a problem with “Previous Versions”. It does not work on my Windows 7 Ultimate machine. I turned on Shadow Copy services, allocated 10 gigs and it still doesnt work.

    I remenber playing around with it when I was using Vista, it did work. Hmmm…I have to look into this.


  6. rasqual said on : June 2nd, 2010 at 2:30 pm

    Not working for me on pro, either. It worked fine in beta.


  7. Jonathan Fisher said on : June 9th, 2010 at 9:45 am

    I’m running Windows 7 Professional on a windows domain and it started working out of the box. I never had to allocate space to it or turn on the service. For those of you that it doesn’t work for, have you tried going into the “system protection” tab of “system properties” and making sure system restore is on and that the protection says “on”?


  8. Charles Ouellette said on : July 15th, 2010 at 10:05 pm

    I am running Windows 7 Professional and the “Previous Versions” function of a file was working okay. Then, I took a recommendation, from a utility I was using, to disable “Administrative Shares.” From then on, with any file, when I right clicked and then left clicked on “Previous Versions,” I got “No Previous Versions available.”

    I had to re-enable “Administrative Shares” to get a file’s “Previous Versions” to work correctly.


  9. JP Melton said on : October 31st, 2010 at 8:57 am

    I recently and regretably changed the attributes of my user folder to where I checked read only and hidden. I was able to un-hide the folder and check the box to a shadow check for read only just as it was before. However now my applications AutoCAD and Autodesk Revit are not working. These apps are dependant on this user folder. If I try restoring this user folder to a previous state before this all happened does anyone think this could correct the problem?


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