My Microsoft Teams assignment lost all version history after submission

Question

Hello everyone, I’m a 12th-grade student, and I’m having a serious problem with a Word file attached to an assignment on Microsoft Teams.

Last week, my teacher assigned us a task on Teams. The assignment included a Word file, and we were asked to work directly on that file and submit it afterward.

While doing my assignment, I kept checking Version History because my teacher had mentioned he would review it. I remember clearly that the file showed 8–9 different versions as I worked — every small change I made was recorded.

I submitted my assignment around 9:00 PM on October 2nd. However, around 2:10 PM on October 5th, my teacher gave me feedback saying:

“In the version I see, everything appeared all at once.”

He seemed to think I might have pasted my entire answer (possibly implying AI use), but that’s not true.

When I went back to check the same file, I saw that the Version History now shows only ONE version, with the note:

“MyName modified 3 hours ago.”

That’s strange because I didn’t touch the file again after submission — and all my previous versions (8–9 of them) are completely gone.

I don’t understand what happened. Why did my version history disappear after I submitted the assignment? I’m worried this misunderstanding could affect my grade.

If anyone knows why this might happen or how to recover the version history, please help me. I need a response that is competent and trustworthy enough to submit to the teacher and explain why.

Thank you so much for reading and helping.

Answer 1

Hello @Mai Thao Anh
Thank you very much for posting question to Microsoft Q&A Forum.

According to this issue, it could be possible that when you submitted the assignment in Microsoft Teams, the file was moved to a submission folder managed by Teams. This process often creates a new copy of the file, and version history is tied to the original location in OneDrive or SharePoint. When a new copy is created, the previous versions usually don’t transfer. That’s why your teacher may only see the final version instead of the incremental edits you made earlier.

Another possibility is that the file didn’t fully sync before submission, especially if changes were made close to the deadline. In such cases, Teams might only capture the latest state of the document.

For now, as version history could not be recovered - you could give a check in your own OneDrive school account if you might have saved your work. That's the only thing that could save your version history that I could think of right now.

To reduce the chance of this happening again, you could follow these suggestions:

• Save and work on a copy directly in OneDrive or SharePoint from the beginning.
• If the assignment allows, submit the link to the original file instead of uploading a new copy. This way, the version history remains visible.
• If link submission isn’t possible, take screenshots of the version history before turning in the assignment for reference.

I hope this information is helpful, please let me know if you have any further questions.

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