Page History in Confluence: Compare and Restore
Someone changed your requirements page and nobody knows who or why. Open the page history in Confluence to see who changed what, compare it with the version before, and restore the old version in a few clicks.
Step by step
Why page history
- Who changed this?. A priority on your requirements page has changed, and nobody remembers agreeing to it. Confluence keeps every saved version of a page. You can see who changed it and when, compare it with the version before, and restore the old text.
Make a change
- A change. First, make a change so the page has a second version. Click Edit at the top of the page. The cancel order requirement has the priority Could. Select that word and type Must in its place. Click Update. This saves version 2 of the page.
Open the history
- Version history. To open the history, click the ••• menu at the top right of the page, then pick Version history.
- Who and when. Each row in the list on the right is one version. It shows the version number, the date and time, and who saved it. Version 2 is the current one.
Compare
- Compare. Highlight changes is switched on, so Confluence compares the selected version with the one before it. The change is easy to spot: Could is crossed out in red and Must is added in green. Now you know who changed what, and when.
Restore
- Restore. The team never agreed to Must, so undo it. In the list, find version 1, which has the old text, and click the ••• menu on that row. Pick Restore. Type a short comment so the team knows why you rolled it back, for example: Back to Could until the team agrees. Click Restore to confirm.
- A new version. The page is restored and the priority says Could again. Restore doesn't delete anything. It saves the old text as a new version, version 3, so the history keeps both the change and the undo.
Recap
- History, compare, restore. To recap: open Version history from the ••• menu. Check who saved each version and look at the red and green changes. Then restore an old version, with a comment that says why.
Common mistakes
- Restoring over other people's later edits. Restore brings back the whole page as it was in that version, so any good edits made after it disappear from the current page. Compare the versions first. If only one line is wrong, edit just that line.
- Restoring without a comment. Without a comment, the new version gives no reason for the rollback, and the change may simply be made again. Write one line, such as Back to Could until the team agrees.
- Checking only the latest change. Highlight changes compares the selected version with the one just before it. If the page was edited several times, click through each version to find the one where the priority changed.
- Thinking Restore removes the bad version. Restore adds a new version on top. The version you rolled back still sits in the history, so you can always see what it said and who saved it.
When a business analyst uses this
Before a sign-off workshop, a stakeholder asks why a requirement on the MoSCoW-prioritised requirements page is now a Must. Open Version history to see who changed it from Could and when, then raise it in the workshop. If it was never agreed, restore the earlier version with a comment explaining why.
Questions people ask
How do I view page history in Confluence?
In Confluence Cloud, open the page, click the ••• menu at the top right and pick Version history. In Data Center, pick Page History from the ••• menu, tick two versions and click Compare selected.
How can I see who changed a Confluence page and what they changed?
In Confluence Cloud, each row in Version history shows the version number, the date and time, and who saved it. With Highlight changes switched on, removed text is crossed out in red and added text shows in green.
