> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.qrtub.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Page Template Versions

> Every save of a Collection's page design creates a numbered version, one active at a time — what that means in practice, and what the app cannot do with the older ones

Every time you save the base template in the Page Editor, QRtub writes a new version of that
Collection's page design rather than overwriting the old one. Versions are numbered from 1, counting
up per Collection, and exactly one is active at a time — the newest. That active version is what
every scan renders.

You can see the number in the Page Editor: with nothing selected, **Page Settings → Page Info**
shows a read-only **Version** field. If it reads v14, this Collection's page has been saved
fourteen times.

Each version is stamped with who saved it and when. Saves are manual — there is no autosave, so a
version appears when you press Save and not before.

## Versions vs. starter templates

These two are easy to confuse, and the difference is *when they act*:

* A **starter template** acts **once, at the moment a Collection is created**. It seeds the
  Collection's fields, its first page design and some sample Items, and then it is finished — it
  never applies again, and there is no way to re-run it. See [Starter
  Templates](/collections/starter-templates).
* A **page template version** is created **every time you save this Collection's page**, from then
  on. It is the ongoing history of the design that the starter template began.

So a Collection created from the IT Assets starter template has one starter template forever and a
growing pile of versions — v1 being roughly what the starter gave it, and v9 being what it looks
like after nine rounds of editing.

## What versioning does and does not give you

What it gives you: saves are additive, so a save never destroys the previous state at the database
level, and the design's history is retained per Collection rather than being a single mutable
record.

What it does not give you today:

* **There is no version history screen.** The editor shows the current number, not a list, and
  there is no way to browse or preview an earlier version.
* **There is no restore button.** An older version cannot be rolled back to from the app.
* **There is no "copy this page to another Collection" action.**

That is worth stating plainly rather than implying: if you make a mess of a page design, undo is
your recovery path within the editing session — and the undo history holds the last 50 changes and
is cleared if you switch Item. Once you have saved and closed the tab, rebuilding by hand is the
practical route.

## Copying a page design to another Collection

The route that does exist is a Collection backup. Exporting a Collection writes a JSON file
containing its settings, its field schema and its **active** page template; creating a new
Collection from that file brings the page design with it.

That is also the closest thing to a snapshot you can keep on purpose: export a backup when a page
design is in a state you would hate to lose. See [Exporting a Collection
Backup](/collections/export-backup) and [Creating a New Collection From a
Backup](/collections/new-collection-from-backup).

Importing a backup into an *existing* Collection replaces its page design — which, consistent with
everything above, arrives as a new version rather than as an edit to the current one.

## What is not versioned

* **Per-Item overrides.** An Item's exceptions are stored separately and carry no version history at
  all; the only recovery from a bad override is to revert it. See [Per-Item Page
  Overrides](/pages/page-overrides).
* **Item data.** Versions cover the design, never the field values it renders.

Deleting a Collection permanently deletes its page templates along with it, every version. Its Links
survive and return to your unassigned pool, so printed codes keep working — but the design does not
come back.

## Related

* [Per-Item Page Overrides](/pages/page-overrides)
* [Starter Templates](/collections/starter-templates)
* [Exporting a Collection Backup](/collections/export-backup)
* [Creating a New Collection From a Backup](/collections/new-collection-from-backup)