How to Restore a SharePoint Page (Undoing Changes Guide)

Last Updated on June 5, 2023

Do you want to restore a page to its former appearance?

Fortunately, it’s easy to do so. In this short guide, I will show you step-by-step how to restore a SharePoint page to a previous version.

Let’s get started.

Table of Contents:

What does restoring a page do in SharePoint Online?

SharePoint Online has a feature known as version history, which automatically keeps track of all the changes made to the page content.

In other words, each time a page is edited and saved, a new version is created and added to the version history.

The restore operation will then allow you to roll back any modifications that have been made since the selected version.

This could include changes to:

Note: Remember that restoring a page to a previous version will not delete the current version.

Instead, a new version is created that is identical to the restored version so you can do further edits or another restore operation when needed.

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There are actually two ways to do this:

This is the fastest method and is preferable if there is no need to check the specifics of the previous version.

Navigate toward the site contents of the SharePoint site and open the site pages folder:

Since we’re talking about restoring SharePoint pages here, all the pages on the site collection (on all SharePoint sites) are in this folder.

Then, do this series of actions:

You will then see all the previous versions of the page.

There is a note that the page is using the current published major version.

To revert to a previous version, click the date and time of the version and select restore from the options:

But what if you already have the page open? Or what if you want to see first the changes on that version?

For this, click page details from the command bar on the page (no need to go to editing mode):

This will open the page details pane on the right side.

Scroll down to more details and click the version history button:

You will then be able to see all the previous versions of the page.

Checking features:

To highlight the changes, there is a toggle at the top of the right pane.
If you want to compare the current version with a past version, click the three dots of the previous version and select the compare option.

Now, if want to restore the current page to a previous version, click the three dots for that version and click restore:

By the way, if you have made some changes on the page while still editing, there is no need to roll back to a previous version.

I need to tell you this since the page details can also be accessed while editing the page. But there is no need for that.

Simply click the undo button from the command bar and it will undo the previous action you made (keep clicking it to go further):

This operation is quite handy especially if you accidentally deleted a web part or content or did something you’re not supposed to.

However, this is only applicable if you haven’t published/republished the page yet as it will create another version.

If you already published/republished the page, then your only option is to restore the page to a previous version.

As you can see, restoring a page to its previous version is easy. If you got confused, kindly drop a comment below.

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