How-To Geek Previous Versions is an incredibly useful feature built into Windows 7, which allows the OS to record and view earlier versions of files without a flux capacitor. Here's a detailed guide to using this excellent feature. This feature goes beyond the functionality of the Recycle Bin as it allows you to: Recover files you may have permanently deleted. View or restore a version of a file which you have saved over. Allow you to compare current and/or previous versions of a file side by side. With a little bit of dedicated hard drive space, an automation script and scheduled task, you can leverage this feature to guard against inadvertent file deletions and overwrites which traditional backups may not adequately cover. Using Previous Versions: A Simple Demonstration Before covering the configuration options, we are going to demonstrate the awesome power of previous versions. If you are already familiar with this, you can jump to the section about configuration. Assume we have a folder on our desktop which has 3 files which have previously been captured as previous versions. We will use these files throughout the demonstration. Making Changes to the Original Files Now we are going to permanently delete (Shift+Delete) the Excel file, edit the text file, and rename the Word document. Recovering the Original Files Once the text file is closed, we lose the ability to undo our changes. So in the event we need to recover a previous version of the file, simply right-click on the file