You can track the history of your document and see past revisions from the History panel. You can also copy content from a previous revision and paste it into a current document, allowing you to reuse historical content.
View document history
To access the History panel, select the History icon from the right toolbar. You’ll see a list of revisions to your document grouped by date, as well as any revisions you have marked as milestones.
Click the arrow next to a group of revisions to see more details, like who made the edits and when.
Revision types
The History panel notes all inline content revisions, including comments and updated links. Updates in the panel are labeled with the type of change.| Revision Type | History Panel Display |
| Inline changes to document | |
| Posted a comment | |
| Updated a source link from another document |
Use the history panel
When you hover over a revision, you can click the arrow to access a menu of actions.
This menu includes:
- Create Milestone allows you to enter a name for a milestone and add remarks.
- Open opens the revision in a new tab.
- Export PDF exports that revision of the entire document to share with collaborators outside of Workiva.
- Create Blackline allows you to compare two different revisions. Learn more about creating blacklines.
- Send for Review allows you to send a specific revision for review. Learn more about send for review.
Authorship overlay
You can also use this panel to view authorship within your document. The authorship overlay highlights your document’s content based on the color assigned to each contributor, so you can see which author made a specific change.
Hover over the document's content to see when the most recent change was made.
To turn on this overlay:
- 1
- Open the History panel.
- 2
- Turn the Authorship toggle on.
If your document is a copy of an existing file or was created from a template, any content from the original file is highlighted in gray.
Cell history in embedded tables
If you need to see what changes were made to a specific cell in an embedded table, you can use the Cell History panel.
To view Cell History:
- 1
- Select a cell in an embedded table.
- 2
- Right-click the cell and select Cell History.
You can also open the History panel and click the Cell tab. This panel updates anytime you select a new cell.
Create and view milestones
If you need to mark a revision as important, you can create a milestone . Milestones automatically appear in the list of revisions when you open the History panel, even if it was originally grouped with other revisions from that date.
To create a milestone:
- 1
- Hover over a revision and click the arrow.
- 2
- Select Create Milestone.
- 3
- Enter a name for your milestone and add remarks (optional).
- 4
- Click Create.
The milestone icon in the panel shows which revisions are milestones.
Filter revisions
You can filter revisions in the History panel by milestones, starred revisions, time period, and author. This allows you to quickly find important revisions of your document.
To filter your revisions:
- 1
- Click the Show Filters icon in the top right corner of the History panel.
- 2
- To filter by milestones or starred items, check the box to Show Milestones or Show Starred. You can check both boxes to show only starred milestones.
- 3
- Use the Updated dropdown to filter by time period.
- 4
- Enter the name of an author to filter by Author.