Every file in Files keeps its history. A new upload with the same name adds the next version, the old ones stay, and you can restore any of them. When there is more than one, Quick look, a proof and the 1-up editor can step between them, wipe one against the one before it, and flip between those two with X (see Artwork inspection). Nothing a proof, job or estimate already uses ever changes under it.
How a new version is made#
- Same name, same folder. Uploading a file whose name is already in the folder adds a version to that file (see the choices when you drop many files).
- Upload new version… in the side panel adds a version to any file, whatever the new file is called. The version keeps the name it was uploaded with. If the new file is a different kind (an image where the file was a PDF), Files asks Replace with another kind of file? first. Through the API you can also add a note saying what changed.
- Drop onto the Versions tab. Dropping a file onto a file's Versions tab adds it as the next version, for example "Drop a file to add v6".
The newest version is always the current one. It is the version the grid shows, that Download gives you and that other apps offer first.
Unchanged and identical files#
- Unchanged uploads make no version. A file with the same size and modified date as the current version isn't sent at all. A file that is sent but turns out to have exactly the same content as the current version is recorded as unchanged, and no version number is used.
- Identical content is stored once. When the same file is anywhere else in your team (another folder, another file's older version), Files keeps a single copy of it. The version's details say Identical to and name the other file, for example "Customers / C-102 / Postcard A.pdf v2".
Identical files are only matched within your own team, never with another team's files.
Version numbers#
Versions are numbered 1, 2, 3 and so on, in the order their uploads finished. A number is given once Files has checked the content, so a large file still being checked keeps its place and later uploads of the same file wait for it. The highest number is the current version. Numbers are never reused, even after a version is deleted.
Restore a version#
Restore on an older version makes it current again by adding it as the next version: restoring v2 of a file that is at v5 creates v6, with the same content as v2. You can add a note saying why. The history stays complete, and the restore uses no extra storage. Restoring a version whose content is the same as the current one changes nothing.
Copies#
Duplicate, or copying files to another folder, makes new files that start with the current version. The copy is a new file with its own history from then on. Choose to copy all versions to keep the whole history. Copies use no extra storage (see Storage).
Delete a version#
Team admins can delete a version that is not the current one and that no other app uses. Files refuses otherwise and says what uses it. The other versions keep their numbers.
Deleting the whole file is done with Trash (see Files).
Where a version came from#
Each version in the Versions tab has a badge saying how it arrived:
| Badge | The version was added by |
|---|---|
| Upload | someone uploading in the web app, or dropping a PDF on the Preflight page |
| API | a script or another system using the Files API |
| Restore | restoring an older version |
| Copy | copying a file |
| Approvals | uploading a proof in Approvals |
| Preflight fixup | applying a preflight fixup, to a file in Files or to a proof in Approvals |
| Print-ready | saving a print-ready file from the 1-up editor as a version |
| Imposition | uploading artwork to an imposition job |
| Estimating | uploading a drawing to an estimate |
| Dielines | saving a dieline from the Box designer to Files |
| Tools & dies | importing a die file (CF2, DXF or PDF) into the tool library |
| Screening | uploading a PDF in the New job dialog of Screening |
| Marks | uploading an asset for marks |
| Request link | a customer, through an upload link |
| Imported | moving the files your apps had before Files into Files: proofs from Approvals, PDF artwork of imposition jobs, drawings of estimates and assets for marks, each in its app's folder |
Every kind of version but Request link is made today (see Proofs and Files, Preflight fixes, Files and images, Jobs and artwork, Box and carton dielines and Sources: PDFs, Files and imposition sheets). A proof shared from the 1-up editor of an imposition job is not a version: Approvals keeps those exact bytes itself.
Planned: Request link versions
Request link versions come with upload links, which let a customer send files straight into a folder.
Proofs and jobs keep their version#
An app that uses a file keeps the exact version it was made with. A new version never changes a proof that was sent, a job that was laid out or an estimate that was priced. Those apps show that a newer version exists, for example "v5 available", and let you switch when you choose to.
A version that another app still uses can't be deleted, and a trashed file that another app still uses isn't purged from the trash (see Files).
Print-ready files#
Every version opens in the 1-up editor. The editor keeps its print-ready file next to the version it was made from; it doesn't add a version by itself. Save print-ready as new version (in the editor, or in the Prepress block of the file's details) makes it the file's next version, marked Print-ready, without storing the bytes twice. Opening such a version in the editor opens the version it was made from, so bleed is never added on top of bleed. The print-ready file of an image is a PDF: saved as a version, it downloads with ".pdf" at the end of its name. A new version of a file you prepared gets the settings of the version before it, and its print-ready file is made again (see Files and images).
Under each version, the Versions tab lists its print-ready files, for example "Print-ready (210 × 297 mm · 3 mm bleed · traps)", with "out of date" when the settings changed after it was made and "Saved as v6" once it became a version, and what the version needs, such as "The cut path changed since the version the settings came from: check the die". Open in editor on a row opens that version in the editor.