How to View Edit History in Google Docs?

In Google Docs, the “Edit History” functionality allows the users to look at the changes performed by any collaborator. Inside the “Edit History”, Google Docs indicates each user by a different color, and its changes are highlighted in that respective color. The “Edit History” is not visible in the normal Google Docs mode. However, it can be turned on from the menu bar. In this tutorial, multiple methods are demonstrated to view the “Edit History” in Google Docs. The content of this post is as follows:

Here, we are taking an existing document of Google Docs as an example. We will use this existing document in all of the above-defined methods.

Let’s start with the first method.

Method 1: Using the “File” Tab

In this method, we will see the edit history of an existing document using the “File” Tab. To achieve this, the following steps are carried out:

  • Click on the “File” tab shown in the menu bar of Google Docs:
  • From the dropdown list, hover over the option “Version history”. Doing this, a submenu will open, pick the second option, “See version history”:
  • The version history of the existing document will open. The right side shows all the versions of the edit history. In this scenario, two users shown in the version history did change in the document. These changes are also shown in the document. Highlighted lines present the new changes in the document.
  • The user can “Restore” the previous versions of the document by clicking on the blue button labeled “Restore this version”, as shown below.

Let’s look at the other method to view edit history in Google Docs.

Method 2: Using the “Version history” Option

In this method, the user can view the edit history of an existing document by using the “Version history” option shown in the menu bar.

  • To do so, move the mouse cursor to the option ”Version history (where the last changes of the user are shown):
  • The user can view the edit history of the existing document by pressing the highlighted option. Here is the edit history of our existing document:

These were all the steps in this method.

Method 3: Using the “Shortcut” Key

The shortcut key that is used for viewing the edit history of a Google Docs document is:

"Ctrl+Alt+Shift+H"

By pressing the above-mentioned shortcut key, the edit history of an existing document will open in front of the user:

At this moment all three methods are completed to view an edit history of the existing document.

That’s all about this tutorial.

Conclusion

The edit history of a Google Docs document can easily be viewed by utilizing the “File” tab from the menu bar. Or the “Edit history” can also be viewed from the option available on the menu bar (adjacent to “Accessibility”). Moreover, a shortcut key “CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+H” also shows the “Edit History”, and the user can view the edits of each user. This Google Docs post has listed multiple methods to view the edit history in Google Docs.