Short answer: open the post, open the Settings sidebar, choose the Post or Page tab, and click the number next to Revisions. Since WordPress 7.0 that opens a new visual revisions screen. Drag the slider along the top to move between saved versions, read the colored markers beside the scrollbar to see what was added, removed and changed, then click Restore. Take a backup before you click Restore. A restore overwrites the current content of that post immediately, and WordPress does not ask you to confirm it twice.
Verified against WordPress 7.1 "Mary Lou", released 19 August 2026. Last verified 24 August 2026. The visual revisions screen arrived in WordPress 7.0 "Armstrong" (20 May 2026) and is described in the WordPress 7.0 Field Guide (14 May 2026) and in the official Revisions documentation, whose changelog records "New revisions screen for WordPress 7.0" on 1 May 2026. Admin screens change between releases. If your screen does not match this page, check which version you are running before assuming something is broken.
Why almost every revisions tutorial shows a different screen
Search for WordPress revisions today and you get pages telling you to click a button labeled Restore This Revision and to check a box called Compare any two revisions. Those instructions are not wrong, but they describe the screen WordPress used up to 6.9. In 7.0 the revisions number in the sidebar opens a different screen, the button on it says Restore, and there is no box to check.
That is the whole reason this page exists. The mechanics of revisions have not changed. The screen you do them on has. If the rest of the admin also stopped matching your tutorials after the update, the old-menu-to-new-menu translation table covers the same problem across the dashboard, and our rundown of what 7.0 changed and what it broke explains why so much moved at once.
How to open revisions in WordPress 7.0 and 7.1
Straight from WordPress's own documentation, there are three steps:
- Open the Settings sidebar in the editor.
- Select the Page or Post tab.
- Click the number next to Revisions.
If there is no number next to Revisions, the post has no stored revisions yet. That happens on posts you have only saved once, and on sites where revisions have been limited or turned off. There is more on that below, because it is the most common reason a reader cannot find the version they are looking for. The route is identical for pages and for posts, apart from which tab you pick at step two.
Read the screen before you touch anything
The new screen is built to be read, not just clicked through. Three controls do the work.
The top slider. Drag it to move through the saved versions in order. The content underneath updates as you move.
The colored markers. Beside the scrollbar you will see markers showing where the changes are and roughly how large each one is. WordPress documents the color meanings as green for inserted content, red for deleted content, yellow for changed content. Click a marker to jump straight to that spot, which is what makes a long post usable. You do not have to scroll a 2,000 word article hunting for the paragraph somebody rewrote.
The Show changes icon. It sits on the left side of the slider and toggles the colored highlighting on and off. Turn it off when you want to read a version the way a visitor would see it, rather than as a diff.
Spend a minute here. The point of a visual revisions screen is that you can identify the right version before you commit to it, and identifying it wrongly is the mistake that costs you work.
Back up first, and here is the cheap version of a backup
Do this before you click Restore, not after. A restore is a write to your live post. If the post is published, the change is public the moment it is saved.
- Full backup. Run a fresh backup through your host's control panel or through whatever backup tool your site already uses, and confirm it reports as completed. A backup that is still running is not a backup.
- The 30 second version, for one post. Open the post in the editor, select all of the content, and paste it into a plain text file on your computer. That gives you the current wording, offline, in the one place a restore cannot reach. It will not preserve block settings perfectly, but it preserves your text, and text is what people usually lose.
If your worry is a whole site rather than one post, restoring a revision is the wrong tool. That is what rolling back a WordPress update is for, and the pre-update checklist covers taking a verified backup before a change of that size.
What a restore actually replaces
This is the part the older tutorials skip, and it is the part that decides whether a restore is safe for you.
WordPress's documentation says that by default a revision keeps track of changes to title, author, content and excerpt. Those are the fields a restore writes back into your post: the title, the content in full, the excerpt, and the recorded author. It replaces all four together. There is no way in the core screen to restore only the third paragraph, or to restore the content while keeping the newer title.
What a restore does not touch
Because those four fields are the only ones the revision stores, everything else on the post stays exactly as it is right now. That includes your categories and tags, the featured image, the URL slug, custom fields and post meta added by plugins, the comments, the publish date, and the published or draft status.
Two consequences follow. First, restoring an old version will not bring back a category you removed last week. Second, if a plugin keeps part of your page outside the post content, for example a page builder that stores its layout in post meta, a core restore will not move that part backwards either. You can end up with old text sitting inside a newer layout. If your site uses a builder like that, test the process on one unimportant post before you trust it on a real one.
What genuinely cannot be undone
Restoring is usually reversible, because the version you had before the restore is itself a stored revision, so it normally stays in the list and you can slide back to it. Usually is not always, and there are three cases where it is not:
- The site limits how many revisions it keeps. A site can define
WP_POST_REVISIONSinwp-config.phpwith a number, and WordPress documents that when that limit is set, old revisions are automatically deleted when the post is updated again. On a site capped at three revisions, a few saves after a restore can push the version you wanted off the end of the list permanently. - Revisions are switched off entirely.
WP_POST_REVISIONSset tofalseor0stores no revisions at all, apart from one autosave per post. Some managed hosts and performance plugins set this to keep the database small, which is why a reader can open the sidebar and find no Revisions number. - There is no undo button and no delete screen. WordPress's documentation is explicit that there is an API function to delete revisions but no interface for it. Nothing in the admin offers to reverse a restore. The only reason you can go back is that the earlier version still happens to be stored.
If you need to change those settings, wp-config.php is a core file and a typo in it can take the whole site down. Copy the file before you edit it, and if you are not comfortable doing that, ask your host rather than experimenting on a live site.
The classic revisions screen is still there, and it wins at one job
In WordPress 7.0 you can still open the old screen by clicking Open classic revisions screen in the sidebar. It shows a side by side comparison of the HTML version of the content, and you move through it with the slider or with Next and Previous.
It keeps one feature the new screen does not advertise: a Compare any two revisions mode, where the slider grows a second handle so you can set a "from" version and a "to" version and see the difference between two versions that are far apart. If your question is "what changed between the version I published in June and the one live now," that is the screen to use.
Autosaves are not revisions
WordPress stores a maximum of one autosave per user per post, and each new autosave overwrites the last. Autosaves are stored as a special kind of revision and are clearly marked when you review them, but they do not overwrite published content. If your browser crashed, WordPress will tell you it has a backup of your post and offer a link to restore it when you return.
So an autosave is a safety net for an interrupted editing session, not an archive. Do not expect to find last Tuesday's autosave. It was overwritten on Tuesday.
FAQ
Where did the "Restore This Revision" button go?
It belongs to the classic revisions screen, which WordPress used up to 6.9. On the 7.0 and 7.1 visual revisions screen the button says Restore. The classic screen, and its original button, are still reachable through Open classic revisions screen in the sidebar.
Does restoring a revision delete the version I have now?
Not in the normal case. Your current version is itself a stored revision, so it stays in the list and you can slide back to it. It can be lost if the site caps the number of revisions it keeps, because old revisions are deleted as the post is updated again.
Why is there no Revisions number in my sidebar?
Either the post has only ever been saved once, or the site is not storing revisions. Hosts, performance plugins and a WP_POST_REVISIONS setting in wp-config.php can all switch them off.
Can I restore just one paragraph instead of the whole post?
Not with the core screen. A restore writes back the title, content, excerpt and author together. To recover one paragraph, open the revision, copy the paragraph you want, and paste it into the current version by hand. That is slower, and it is also much safer.
Will this screen look the same in the next release?
No promises. It changed in 7.0 and it may change again. This page was checked against WordPress 7.1 on 24 August 2026, and the version and date at the top are there so you can tell at a glance whether it is still current.
