The WordPress editor autosaves your work and stores a revision history for each page and post on your site. This guide will show you how to restore an earlier version of a page or post.
While writing and editing, your changes are automatically saved to your local device every 15 seconds and online about once per minute. At the top-right of the editing screen, you’ll see the notification move from “Save Draft” to “Autosaving” to “Saved“:
If you have not yet published the page or post, you can save it manually by clicking on the “Save Draft” link at the top of the page:
If you are editing a post or page that has already been published, autosave continues to work, but will not overwrite the published content. The changes will not be displayed on the site until you click the “Save” button at the top of the screen:
If you go offline while editing or accidentally navigate away from a post/page while working on it, WordPress.com will save your post to your web browser’s local storage. When you return to the editor, you will see a note that says, “There is an autosave of this post that is more recent than the version below.“
Click the X icon to return to the draft as-is, or click “View the autosave” to restore the most recent autosave. You can also browse the revisions to restore an earlier version of your content.
A revision is not stored for every autosave; it is just the last one the system captured. A revision is stored when you save manually or click the “Save” or “Publish” button.
When you save a draft manually or click the “Save” button, a revision is created. Revisions allow you to view the recent changes and revert to an earlier version if necessary.
To view the saved revisions of a page or post:
- Visit your site’s dashboard.
- Click on Pages or Posts (or navigate to Editor → Templates for template revisions).
- Click on the content you wish to edit.
- Open the settings sidebar.
If you do not have the sidebar on the right, click the Settings icon in the top-right corner to bring up the settings. This icon looks like a square with two uneven columns:
- Click the number next to the Revisions label.
- If this option is absent, there are no saved revisions to view yet. Check these other tips to recover lost content.
Depending on your user role, the following revisions can be accessed:
- Administrators and editors can access all available revisions.
- Authors can see revisions for any posts they have authored.
- Contributors can see revisions on their drafts only.
The next section will cover how to compare and restore your content revisions.
When comparing revisions, the removed content is shown on the left in red, and the added content is shown on the right in green. Using the slider at the top center of the screen, you can browse through all past revisions:
By default, it will show you the two most recent revisions. You can check the box at the top labeled “compare any two revisions” to select any two different revisions to compare, even if they aren’t side by side.
Once you have identified your revision, you can use the following steps to restore it.
- Visit your site’s dashboard.
- Navigate to Pages or Posts and click on the page or post you wish to edit.
- Open the settings sidebar.
- Click the number next to the Revisions label.
- At the top of the screen, you will find a slider that you can use to load earlier page versions:
- The content will be shown in two columns with the latest version is displayed on the right, and the previous revision on the left.
- Click the “Restore This Revision” button to revert to a revision. This will load the editor with the selected revision from the right-side column.
You can follow the same steps to restore a newer (up to the most recent) revision of a page or post if you restore an earlier version than intended.
To exit the revisions screen, click the “Go to editor” link at top left to return to the editor without restoring any revisions.
If you want to restore a specific part of a revision without replacing the entire content, you can copy just the content you wish to restore. Follow these steps:
- View the revisions.
- Highlight the part of the revision you would like to recover.
- Right-click and select Copy or use cmd+c on Mac or CTRL+c on PC.
- Click Cancel to close the Revisions window without loading the entire revision.
- Insert a Custom HTML block in the position you want to add the copied content.
- Right-click and select Paste, or use cmd+v on Mac or CTRL+v on PC to paste the part of the revision into the Custom HTML block.
- Click the ellipses (three dots (⋮)) in the Custom HTML block toolbar and select Convert to blocks.
If you ever lose content for a post or page you were working on, and you cannot locate the content in the revisions, check these other common reasons why content can be lost:
- Check the trash to ensure the post/page wasn’t accidentally deleted.
- Check your other drafts in both Posts and Pages to ensure you didn’t start writing a post as a page or vice versa.
- Ensure you don’t have another post or page editor tab open. Having the editor open in multiple browser windows/tabs can cause the autosave to trigger in one tab while you’re working in a different one.
- Ensure that autosave is working, and the post says Saved in the top right every few seconds after making changes. If not, manually click the “Save Draft” button to ensure the post or page is saving, then try clearing your browser’s cache.
- If you’re writing a very long post within the editor, it’s a great idea to keep a backup by copying and pasting it onto your local computer, such as in a Word or text document.
