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I have a Google Docs document that I want to share, but I don't want to retain the revision history when I do so. What's the easiest way to go about this?

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This is a very good question. Often people in an org can sniff around doc history to see what the author was thinking on earlier revs.

Imagine the scenario:

  • manager needs a list of everyone on his team for a document he/she is planning to send everyone
  • so needs to find a list of everyone
  • first list of everyone he/she finds is from a company database
  • this list also happens to have salary information
  • pastes all this info into doc
  • deletes the salary info
  • publishes info to entire team
  • someone on team reading doc.. looks over history.. sees version that includes everyone's salary information (eeek!)

Note: this is only an issue for someone given edit rights to document.

A way around this (not elegant) is to make a copy of the doc (File --> Make a copy...)

This copy will have the most current content and will start history fresh. Then you can delete the original one, and rename the new one, etc.

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I think your solution is good, but there's an awful lot of fluff in there. – C. Ross Oct 6 '10 at 20:59
That works. It'd be nice if I could just push a button to hide the history, though. Ah well. – Benjamin Pollack Oct 6 '10 at 21:18

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