Restoring a Previous Version of Your Survey¶

Made a change you regret - deleted a question you actually needed, or want to undo a batch of edits an AI assistant made on your behalf? Opionate keeps a running history of your draft's saves, and restoring an earlier one takes a couple of clicks, with a clear preview of exactly what will change before anything actually happens. See Autosave and Version History for the background on what gets saved and when; this guide covers the actual restore workflow.

Table of Contents¶

• Finding Your Version History
• Reading an Entry
• Previewing a Restore
• Committing the Restore
• What Happens After
• FAQ

Finding Your Version History¶

In either the Classic Survey builder or the Advanced Survey builder, look at the save-status indicator near the top of the page - it shows Saving... while a change is actively being saved, Unsaved if there's a change waiting to save, or Saved once everything is up to date. Click the Saved badge to open the version history dropdown.

Reading an Entry¶

Each entry in the dropdown shows three things: how long ago it happened (just now, a few minutes ago, hours or days ago), who made it, and what kind of change it was. "You" means a change made directly in your own browser session; an entry tagged via Claude means an AI assistant made that change on your behalf through a connected MCP tool. The change type is written out in plain language - "Auto-saved," "Saved changes," "Added a section," "Updated a section," "Deleted a section," or, for an entry that's itself a previous restore, "Restored version N."

Previewing a Restore¶

Click Restore next to any entry. This doesn't restore anything immediately - it opens a confirmation dialog listing, in plain English, exactly what restoring that version would do: a changed title or description, questions or sections it would remove, bring back, or revert changes to. If the version you picked has no actual content differences from what's currently saved, the dialog tells you that too, rather than showing an empty list.

For an Advanced Survey specifically, a version saved before section-level restoring was supported shows a warning that it may not restore fully - this only affects genuinely old versions; anything saved recently restores completely, sections included.

Committing the Restore¶

If the preview looks right, click Restore this version to commit it. If not, Cancel closes the dialog without changing anything - previewing a restore never modifies your draft by itself, only clicking through on the confirmation does.

What Happens After¶

Once committed, your draft's current state becomes exactly what that version captured - title, description, questions, and (for an Advanced Survey) section structure all included. The restore itself is saved as a new version too, labeled "Restored version N," so if you change your mind afterward, you can look back through history and restore to a point before the restore, the same way you would with any other version.

FAQ¶

Can I restore a version from an AI assistant's own revert flow the same way, in the browser?
Yes - every version, regardless of which channel created it, shows up in the same history and can be restored from the browser dropdown.

What if I don't see the version I'm looking for?
Opionate keeps up to 50 versions per survey, with the oldest automatically trimmed past that limit - if what you're looking for is old enough, it may no longer be there. See Autosave and Version History for the retention details.

Does restoring affect a section's images or attached media?
For an Advanced Survey, restoring a version also reconciles the relational section data - including which media a section references - rather than touching only the question text, so a restored section's image attachments come back correctly too.

Can I restore a version after publishing the survey?
No - version history is wiped entirely at publish, since a draft-state restore and real respondent answers shouldn't ever be able to collide. Once a survey is live, there's nothing to restore back to.

For the concepts behind what you're seeing here, see Autosave and Version History: How Opionate Protects Your Work.