A text document, presentation, or spreadsheet is not a static file. From the moment we create it until we finish it, they go through different phases, changes, adjustments, corrections …

There are those who keep several versions of the same document in plan “draft 1”, “draft 2”, “revised”, “finished”, “final finished”, etc. But for years, we have had the Change control function in Word or Versions in Google Drive that allows us to work on a single document seeing the changes it has undergone.

Next, we will see what the Versions and Activity function of Google Drive consists of, which will help us to manage our office files better, especially if we work as a team.

Exercise

The Activity feature displays information about changes that have been made to files stored on Google Drive.

Editing, comments, name change, folder change, new files in a folder, sharing a document … These common tasks will appear in Activity indicating which user has done that and when.

The activity list is not visible by default. To see Activity we must access our documents, in My unit , select a file or folder, and in the right panel click on Information> Activity.

Clicking on another file will change that panel showing the specific changes of each selected document or folder.

Its utility is basically for teamwork, since it allows us to know which users have performed this or that task. It also helps us remember when we did such a thing in the past.

This Activity function is available in both the online and mobile versions of Android, iPhone and iPad.

Versions

Another really useful function of Google Drive is Versions, which allows us to recover old material that we discard but that we are interested in rescuing or seeing the evolution of a document.

When we select a document, in the More drop-down menu we will find the Manage versions option. If we have made changes spaced over time, we will see several versions indicating the date of each one.

From there we can download the versions to our computer.

Manually we can include versions of that document from the same menu More> Manage versions by clicking Upload new version.

The versions are only available in the online version of Google Drive.

If what we want is to see the content of those versions and/or compare them with another version of the same document, we must open the document in question, be it a text document, a spreadsheet or a presentation, and from File> History versions> View version history.

We will see a list of changes organized by dates. By clicking on each timestamp, we will see the modifications in the document highlighted with colors.

If we are interested in putting a little order in the versions or discounting one in particular, from More we can click on Name this version.

Another action available from File> Version History> View Version History is the possibility of restoring a previous version in case we want to discard the most recent version.

It will be enough to go to the right panel, select the time stamp that we are interested in restoring, and then click Restore this version> Restore.

How to Track Changes in Google Docs

Let’s discuss how to track changes in the google doc.

Step 1. Click on your Gmail thumbnail and click on the drive image.

Step 2. It will open your google drive.

Source: Taken by Self

Step 3. Now you will find all your google docs present there.

Step 4. Hover around them and look for the doc you want to work on.

Step 5. Open the google document you want to track changes in.

Step 6. On the top row, there are a lot of options given horizontally.

Step 7. Now on the top click on “Editing.”

Source: Taken by Self

Step 8. It will scroll down, and three options will appear there as editing, suggesting and viewing.

Step 9. Now click on Suggesting option with a tag line “Edit becomes suggestions.” It says to track changes in the document. After clicking, the button will turn green.

Source: Taken by Self

Step 10. Now you can make changes wherever you feel to make in your Google document, and they will be saved in it.
Step 11. Now when the viewer sees, they can see recent changes in Google doc.