Revision and Snapshot History
Accepted Solutions
Hi @Donna_C – your use-case for Airtable will work perfectly fine in the free version!
The Revision History is a logging of all changes made to the data in your base. You can expand a record vertically (by clicking on the blue button to the left of the record name, next to the record number), and in the expanded view, there is a revision history for that record in the column on the right side (this may be hidden by default, but can be expanded by clicking the little toggle box in the top right corner). It looks something like this:
You’ll notice the history of changes it shows me goes back 3 months and further. All it means when it says that you get “2 weeks of Revision History” is that you cannot view the log of changes you made to your records that are older than 2 weeks in this side-bar. It does not affect the actual data in your records, only the log of changes you made. And even that log is still there, it still exists, it just isn’t visible to you – but this isn’t critical for a single user like yourself just keeping simple records.
The Snapshot History is kind of like a back up tool. You can take a “snapshot” of the status of your database at a certain point in time – you can “freeze” a version of your base with the data as it was at that point in time. This is accessible by clicking the little clock icon in the top-right corner of your base:
Those snapshots I have are kind of like backups. If I were to make a horrible, catastrophic mistake in my database that couldn’t be recovered (like, suppose I accidentally deleted thousands of records), I could restore to one of these snapshots, and it would set my base back to the way it looked on, for example, “May 21st 2020 at 11:54 am”.
You’ll notice my snapshots will stick around for up to a year, because I am on a paid plan. Snapshots on a free plan will only stick around for 2 weeks, and then they are deleted. This does not affect any of the data in your base - it only deletes the snapshot, the backup version of your base that was saved at the state of the data 2 weeks prior. This feature is very important for mission critical business data, but again, for a single user keeping simple records, this should not be a big deal for you at all.
Hi @Donna_C – your use-case for Airtable will work perfectly fine in the free version!
The Revision History is a logging of all changes made to the data in your base. You can expand a record vertically (by clicking on the blue button to the left of the record name, next to the record number), and in the expanded view, there is a revision history for that record in the column on the right side (this may be hidden by default, but can be expanded by clicking the little toggle box in the top right corner). It looks something like this:
You’ll notice the history of changes it shows me goes back 3 months and further. All it means when it says that you get “2 weeks of Revision History” is that you cannot view the log of changes you made to your records that are older than 2 weeks in this side-bar. It does not affect the actual data in your records, only the log of changes you made. And even that log is still there, it still exists, it just isn’t visible to you – but this isn’t critical for a single user like yourself just keeping simple records.
The Snapshot History is kind of like a back up tool. You can take a “snapshot” of the status of your database at a certain point in time – you can “freeze” a version of your base with the data as it was at that point in time. This is accessible by clicking the little clock icon in the top-right corner of your base:
Those snapshots I have are kind of like backups. If I were to make a horrible, catastrophic mistake in my database that couldn’t be recovered (like, suppose I accidentally deleted thousands of records), I could restore to one of these snapshots, and it would set my base back to the way it looked on, for example, “May 21st 2020 at 11:54 am”.
You’ll notice my snapshots will stick around for up to a year, because I am on a paid plan. Snapshots on a free plan will only stick around for 2 weeks, and then they are deleted. This does not affect any of the data in your base - it only deletes the snapshot, the backup version of your base that was saved at the state of the data 2 weeks prior. This feature is very important for mission critical business data, but again, for a single user keeping simple records, this should not be a big deal for you at all.
