At different times while working on a document, you may want to preserve the document in its current state so that you can refer back to it at a later time.
The Versions command (File menu) in Microsoft Word 2000 and Word 97 allows you to create and store multiple snapshots of a document within a single file and then view the snapshots at a later time. This file-management feature is handy because you can use it to track the history of a file and help reduce the number of archive files that you have to manage.
For example, say that you've just finished writing a project proposal and saved the document in a file called Project1. You now want to send the project proposal to your team so that they can make comments. However, before sending the proposal to the team, you want to preserve the document in its current state. You can use the Versions command to save the current version of the project proposal and all subsequent versions of the document within the Project1 file.
You can manually create a snapshot of a document at any time or automatically create a snapshot of your document each time you close the document.
To create a snapshot of a document
The next time you want to manually create another snapshot of a document, just complete the preceding procedure again.
To open a particular version of a document
If you need to make changes to a particular version of a document, you must first open that version, and then save it as a separate file by using the Save As command on the File menu.
If the size of the file gets too large, you can delete some of the older versions of the document from the file. On the File menu, click Versions. Hold down CTRL and click each version that you want to delete, and then click Delete.
For more information about how you can save multiple versions of a document in one file, type versions or save multiple versions in the Office Assistant or on the Answer Wizard tab in the Help window, and then click Search.