How To Enable Versioning On SharePoint Online Or On-Premises

Versions control is a critical feature for any enterprise level document collaboration stage. In SharePoint, the versioning feature automatically saves every version of a document. This allows multiple people or users to make changes to a document without the fear of overwriting a previous version.

The most important and useful part to enable versioning on SharePoint list or library is it will fix the issue if the copy has become corrupted or unavailable, then we can revert back to the earlier version without any issue. We can retain both minor (drafts) and major drafts. It is very important to keep in mind that each version is basically a copy of our item (or document), so if we are saving more versions of a larger item; this can take up more space in your SharePoint site.

Let’s start with steps on how to enable versioning on library with the screenshots.

Login to SharePoint site with an appropriate permission enabled user account.
Go to the site contents by clicking on the gear box from the right side of the page and open any one of document library from the site contest page.

Now, select Library setting from the ribbon page. It will take us to the properties of the document library.
On the setting page, select versioning setting from the general settings

On the Versioning Settings page, click the radio button, which is next to Create major and minor (draft) versions. Example 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 etc.

Under Optionally limit the number of versions to retain, enter the following information: Check the box, which is next to Keep the following number of major versions.

Enter – 5

Check the box, which is next to Keep drafts for the number given below for the major versions.

Enter – ANY OF THE NUMBER

Under who should see the draft items in this document library, click the radio button, which is next to only the users, who can edit the items.

Review your settings and click OK.

Pretty basic! If you’re wondering how to check what version an item is or how to recover a previous version it will be covered in “How to recover an item from Version History”.
Once everything is done, go back to the list and click on eclipse and select the version, where we can see the version created for this file on the list.

Thanks.