Restoring Old Files with Mac OS X Lion Version Control?

First off, I have to say that you don't need a second computer to be able to take advantage of Time Machine's incredibly easy backup capabilities. All you need is an external hard drive and your Mac will take care of all the heavy lifting. Choose "Time Machine" from the System Preferences, pick that drive, and that's all you have to do. Now any time that drive is plugged into the computer, it'll continue its backup or start a new one. It's that easy.

As you say, Lion has built-in version control which is incredibly helpful if you know how to use it. Most people, I fear, will see it as an obstacle and a hassle and possibly just disable it (see my article "Locked, Haven't Made Changes Recently" error in Mac OS X Lion for example).

Instead of you joining the ranks of people who disable a terrific feature because you aren't sure how to use it, let's dig in a little bit and see just how to back up and restore a file to its earlier glory!

What's important to realize is that every time you save a file, you're creating a new version of it, so you could foreseeably end up with a dozen or more versions of a file that you're editing over a long period of time, like a graduate school dissertation or a book. But that's good because it's saving your booty if you one day open up the file and -- gasp! -- it's empty. A separate backup disk is even more insurance and is definitely better.

To demonstrate, I've taken a screenshot that I produced for an earlier article on my blog and opened it up in GraphicConverter. It looks like this:

See that red box around the pencil icon? That was a mistake and I realized that I don't want it, but want to restore to the previous version of the image, the one I had on my computer yesterday. No problem with Time Machine on the job!

GraphicConverter, like every other Lion compatible app, now has a more capable title bar. Where you see the title and, in this case, the color space in use "(RGB)", turns out there's a hidden menu too. A click reveals:

To back up to a previous version, choose "Browse All Versions..." and you'll be whisked away to Time Machine, with its spacy graphics and weird interface. It's jarring the first time!

You can see -- and I apologize for shrinking it down so much to get it to fit here on the blog -- that Time Machine is showing us the current version of the file on the left, and the stacked history of all versions saved on the right, with the most recent in front. No surprise, they're the same.

A click on the grey titlebar on the image immediately behind the most recent image on the right side, however, and it comes to the forefront, even showing the earlier file name in its title bar:

That's the one I want!

To restore it (and overwrite the most recent version with the red box) I click on the big "Restore" button just below the window and I'm out of Time Machine and back in my graphics editor with the earlier version of the image file:

Here's where it gets a bit confusing, though. If you go to save a version of this newly restored image file, GraphicConverter reports that there's a more recent version and warns you that you'll step on it when you save this version. Follow all that? Yeah, it's confusing!

This is all good, though. Click on "Save" and...

Yeah, another warning message, one that's even more anxiety-provoking. Read it closely, though, and you'll realize that the more recent version that you're about to overwrite with the restored version is actually going to end up saved as a version of the file anyway, so if you change your mind again, you can recover it!

Click on "Save Anyway" to proceed.

Done.

Want to confirm? Select the image icon then use the preview capability of Mac OS X Lion to see what version you've ended up with:

Very, very slick and once you use it a single time I predict you'll become quite a fan and just a bit more relaxed knowing that Mac OS X has got your back on these file edits, whether it's a graphic, a document or any other file you might tweak or modify over time.

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