Working with versioned libraries

Versioned SharePoint document libraries store revisions of documents and metadata. This feature allows you to track changes and easily restore a document to an earlier state. It is especially helpful when several people collaborate on the same documents, or when using document workflows.

Checking in and checking out documents

By checking out a document, you prevent other users from making changes to it. You can check out a document directly from harmon.ie, by selecting Check Out from the document context menu. Documents that are checked out have a small blue arrow indicator on their icon ().

When you are finished editing the document, you check it back in by selecting Check In from the document context menu.

Note: To check in a file, you must fill in all the required properties, and all properties values must pass column validation (if such is defined).

From the context menu of a checked out document, you can also select Discard Check Out, which makes the document editable by your colleagues without saving any of your changes to SharePoint.

harmon.ie lets you check in and check out multiple selected documents simultaneously. The comments prompt displayed when checking in multiple documents applies to all of the documents that are being checked in.

Note: If you check in or check out a document using an external application, like Microsoft Word, the sidebar needs to be refreshed to display your changes. Use the Refresh icon () in the toolbar to do it, or press F5.

View version history

To view the revision history of a SharePoint document, right-click a document and select Version History. The Version History pane opens at the bottom of the harmon.ie toolbar.

For each version of the document you can:

• See who created the version and when.
• In the Enterprise Edition only, you can:
  • See the presence awareness of this person. Right-click the presence awareness icon to open the instant messaging menu.
  • Click the person’s name or picture to view their full profile in the People tab.
    Note: A social server must be configured, and you must be logged into the instant messaging server for these features to work.
• View the version number and comments of each revision.
• Click the Copy Link icon () to copy the URL of a specific version of the document to the clipboard. By linking to a specific version you do not have to worry that the contents of the linked document will change.
• Click the Open icon () to open a specific version of the document.
• Click the down-arrow () and select:
  • Restore Version to restore an older version of a document
  • Delete Version to delete a specific version.