Versions

Last week we discussed Snapshots, a way of saving the annotations on a page and restoring them later. That works well for certain situations, but only annotations are saved and on a page-by-page basis. For changes that affect an entire piece, Versions is the tool for the job.

Versions lets you save and restore all of a score’s metadata and annotations at once. A teacher, for instance, might want to use the same PDF file for several different students but with personalized annotations and recordings. Select “Versions” from the Tools menu to get started—the interface looks similar to the Snapshots feature, so if you followed along last week creating and browsing through a score’s versions should feel familiar.

Unlike Snapshots, which simply copy your annotations back and forth as they’re saved and restored, Versions introduces the idea of a “current” version. When you create or restore a version, an arrow will appear next to it. It won’t be updated automatically as you make changes to your score, but the next time you switch to a different version or create a new one, you’ll be prompted to save those changes to the current version first. You can also select the current version and manually save it at any time.

So next time you find yourself duplicating files and renaming them to tell them apart, save some space and remember to use the Versions tool instead!