How do I see the complete page content of an old version of a page?

Question

I have a page library in a publishing site that has major and minor versions. I can click on a page's context menu and select View History and it gives me a list of all the major and minor version along with what appears to be a snippet of the page content.

The problem is that I can't view the historical version of a page in its entirety. If I click the date or context menu > View, I can't click the title like you can on a document and view the historical version.

How do I see the complete page content of an old version of a page?

Answer 1

I'm afraid the quick answer is you can't Alex. All you can see is what's changed in the Page Comparison view. This allows you to see what content was changed between particular versions.

You'll notice a warning on that page that states changes to WebParts and their properties are not displayed and I believe this is the reason why MS won't let you view a previous version in it's entirety.

The problem appears to be due to the fact that when you try and get the WebPartManager object in code from a Page version it returns null. This suggests that MS aren't storing a historical copy of the webpart with the version.

Paul.