Reverting a Content Item

When editing a content item, you can undo actions using the Undo functionality. However, once you have saved a content item, undoing specific editing actions is no longer possible. In cases where you need to revert a content item to a state in the past, use the XperienCentral revisions functionality. In XperienCentral, a revision is a copy of the state of a content item at a particular date and time in the past. When you restore an earlier revision of a content item, the following properties are restored:

• The full content (rich text, content elements, modular content, layouts)
• The structure of the content item
• The title of the content item

Two crucial properties of the content item, however, are not retained from the restored revision: the publication state and workflow status. These two properties of a restored revision are always inherited from the latest revision. The most important reason for this is to prevent an unpublished/inactive content item from becoming published/active and vice versa as a result of the restore action.

The following actions trigger the creation of a new revision of a content item in XperienCentral:

• Saving a content item
• Changing the workflow status of a content item
• Restoring a content item to a previous revision

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Reverting a Content Item to a Previous Version

To revert a content item to a previous revision, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the content item you want to revert to a previous revision.
2. Navigate to the Properties panel.
3. Click the Revisions tab:
   
   
   
   
   The Revisions tab opens. It shows a list containing the last x number of revisions for the current content item. The revisions are ordered from top to bottom with the newest revision appearing at the top. The numbering is consecutive beginning at 1. As a result of cleanup actions in your deployment, the revision number appearing at the bottom will not always be 1. For example, you could see in the table revisions 26-51 which means that the first 25 revisions have been deleted and you can only choose to revert to a revision between 26 and 51.  The revisions table shows the following properties for each revision:
   

   
   

   Property	Description
   Revision	The content item revision number.
   Title	The title the revision had when it was saved.
   Editor	The editor responsible for saving the revision.
   Created	The date and time that the revision was saved.
   Publication status	The publication status the revision had when it was saved ("active" or "inactive").
   Workflow state	The workflow state the revision had when it was saved.
   [Restore]	Restores the content item to the revision you select.

   
   
   The following shows an example of a content item with 7 revisions:
   
   
   
   
   
   

4. To preview a revision, click the revision number. For example:
   
   
   
   
   
   
   The revision you selected appears in the Workspace. The revision is not editable during the preview. When you preview a revision, you are seeing the exact state the content was in at the time the revision was saved.
   
   

5. If this is the revision you want to revert to, navigate back to the Revisions tab in the Properties widget and click [Restore] in the far right column for that revision. When a revision is restored, the content item is essentially reset to a previous state excepting possibly its workflow status and publication state if they were different from the latest revision.

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XperienCentral Revision Settings

You can configure the following settings in the General tab of the XperienCentral Setup Tool for the revision functionality.

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