Elementor Revisions and History: Undo, Restore and Limit Revisions

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To take an Elementor page back to an earlier state, use the editor's "History" panel. It has two tabs: "Actions", which steps back through the edits you made in the current session, and "Revisions", which takes you back to a saved version.

Elementor's revisions are not stored by Elementor itself; they use WordPress's built-in revision system. That's why there is no setting for the number of revisions in Elementor's settings screen — you set it on the WordPress side. This article explains how to restore earlier states and manage the number of revisions, using the screens of Elementor 4.3 (the latest version as of October 2026).

Open the History panel

In the Elementor editor, click the "History" icon in the top toolbar. You can also open it with Ctrl + Shift + H (Cmd + Shift + H on a Mac).

The panel has two tabs at the top:

Undo edits made in this session (Actions tab)

To undo just the last edit, keyboard shortcuts are quickest.

• Undo: Ctrl + Z (Cmd + Z on a Mac)
• Redo: Ctrl + Shift + Z (Cmd + Shift + Z on a Mac)

To go back several steps, open the "Actions" tab in the History panel and click the action you want to return to. The page reverts to how it looked at that point.

The "Actions" tab only holds edits made since you opened the editor. To return to an earlier state after closing the editor, use the "Revisions" tab described next.

Restore a saved revision (Revisions tab)

Each time you save the page, its state at that moment is recorded as a revision.

1. Open the "Revisions" tab in the History panel
2. Click the revision you want in the list. The editor switches to that revision's content so you can check it
3. If it's what you want, click "Apply"; otherwise click "Discard"
4. Applied content is autosaved. To make it live on a published page, click "Publish" in the toolbar ("Update" for a page that is already published)

Each item in the list shows when it was saved and by whom. "Current Version" is the current state, and "Autosave" is a state saved automatically while editing. According to the Elementor 4.3 source code, the list shows up to 50 entries, newest first.

If there are no revisions yet, the panel says "No Revisions Saved Yet". On sites where WordPress revisions are disabled, you instead see a message saying the feature is unavailable (check WP_POST_REVISIONS, described below).

You can also restore from the WordPress revisions screen

Because Elementor revisions are WordPress revisions, you can also restore them from the WordPress admin. Open the post in the block editor and click "Revisions" in the sidebar to open the revision comparison screen. Choose the version you want and click "Restore This Revision".

Elementor hooks into this, so when a revision is restored on the WordPress screen, Elementor's data (the layout information) is restored along with it. However, the differences shown on the comparison screen are differences in the post body (post_content), and they don't clearly show changes to the Elementor layout. To restore while checking the visual result, the Elementor "Revisions" tab is the more reliable choice.

Limit the number of revisions

By default, WordPress keeps an unlimited number of revisions. For Elementor pages, the layout information (the _elementor_data post meta) is also copied into each revision, so the database grows as you keep editing. To set a limit, add the following line to wp-config.php above the line "That's all, stop editing!".

<?php
// Keep up to the 10 most recent revisions per post
define( 'WP_POST_REVISIONS', 10 );

With 0, you can no longer restore earlier states from Elementor's "Revisions" tab. To keep the ability to go back, limit the number instead of setting it to 0.

Lowering the number doesn't immediately delete existing old revisions. The oldest revisions beyond the limit are deleted the next time that post is saved.

To use different limits per post type, use the wp_revisions_to_keep filter. For example, to keep 20 revisions for pages only:

<?php
add_filter( 'wp_revisions_to_keep', function ( $num, $post ) {
	if ( 'page' === $post->post_type ) {
		return 20;
	}
	return $num;
}, 10, 2 );

For details, see How to limit the number of revisions in WordPress (WP_POST_REVISIONS). Note that on Elementor's hosting service (Elementor Hosting), according to Elementor's help, the number of revisions is fixed at 25.

Delete old revisions that have piled up

To delete old revisions in bulk, you can use WP-CLI. Deleted revisions can't be restored, so back up the database first.

# Back up the database
wp db export before-revision-cleanup.sql

# Count the revisions of post ID 123
wp post list --post_type=revision --post_parent=123 --format=count

# Delete all revisions of post ID 123
wp post delete $(wp post list --post_type=revision --post_parent=123 --format=ids) --force

When you delete revisions with wp post delete, the post meta attached to them (including Elementor's data) is deleted as well. If there are no revisions, no IDs are passed to wp post delete and it returns an error, so check the count first. For cleaning up revisions across the whole site, see How to delete revisions from the WordPress database.

If restoring doesn’t work

• Nothing appears in the "Revisions" tab: check whether WP_POST_REVISIONS is set to 0 or false in wp-config.php. A plugin may also be disabling revisions
• The live page doesn't change after restoring: make sure you clicked "Update" after "Apply". If you use a caching plugin or server-side caching, clear that cache too
• The layout still looks broken: Elementor's CSS may be stale. Following Elementor's help (updated September 2026), go to "Elementor" → "Editor" → "Tools" in the admin, click "Clear Files & Data" in the "Elementor Cache" field, then check the page (the menu location may change between versions)
• Conflicts with someone else's changes: if several people edit the same page at once, whoever saves last overwrites the others. Check who saved what and when in the revision list before restoring

Summary

• To undo while editing, use Ctrl + Z or the "Actions" tab in the History panel. It is cleared when you close the editor
• To return to a saved state, choose a revision in the "Revisions" tab, click "Apply", then "Update"
• Elementor revisions are WordPress revisions, so limit them with WP_POST_REVISIONS or wp_revisions_to_keep
• Back up the database before deleting old revisions

Related articles:

• Elementor basics: how to build a page
• How to limit the number of revisions in WordPress (WP_POST_REVISIONS)
• How to delete revisions from the WordPress database

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