Undo changes

TFS 2017 | TFS 2015 | TFS 2013

Visual Studio 2019 | Visual Studio 2017 | Visual Studio 2015

When undoing changes in Git, first decide what type of changes you are looking to undo. These changes fall into three categories:

• Discard uncommitted changes to a file, bringing the file back to the version in the last commit.
• Reset your local branch to a previous commit.
• Revert changes pushed to a remote branch and shared with others.

If you just need to make small updates such as to fix a typo or small problem introduced in your last commit, consider amending your previous commit or fixing the change in a new commit instead of any of these other steps.

In this tutorial you learn how to:

• Discard uncommitted changes to a single file
• Revert changes in shared commits
• Reset a branch to a previous state

Discard uncommitted changes to a single file

Restore file contents back to a known good version, removing unwanted changes.

Warning

These commands will overwrite your existing file changes. If you think you might want these changes later, consider stashing them instead.

Visual Studio

Note

Visual Studio 2019 version 16.8 and later versions provide a new Git menu for managing the Git workflow with less context switching than Team Explorer. Procedures provided in this article under the Visual Studio 2019 tab provide information for using the Git experience as well as Team Explorer. To learn more, see Side-by-side comparison of Git and Team Explorer.

Visual Studio 2015 & 2017

1. Open up the Changes view in Team Explorer.

2. Under the Changes section, find the file that you want to restore to the previous version. If your change is staged, remove it from the Staged Changes section by right-clicking and selecting Unstage.

3. Right-click that file and select Undo Changes.

   

Command Line

You can use the checkout command and give it the filename(s) to change. Use wildcards for undoing changes to multiple files.

> git checkout approuter.js

You can revert the file to the version in a specific commit by providing the commit ID:

> git checkout 38035acd2 approuter.js

This differs from the earlier use of the checkout command used to swap to a different branch. Git will tell you if it is changing a file or swapping between branches in the output, and complain if it's not clear which one you are trying to do.

Revert changes in shared commits

Use revert to undo the changes made in your commits pushed to shared branches. The revert command creates a new commit that undoes the changes on a previous commit. No history is rewritten in a revert, making it safe to use when working with others.

Visual Studio

Note

Visual Studio 2019 version 16.8 and later versions provide a new Git menu for managing the Git workflow with less context switching than Team Explorer. Procedures provided in this article under the Visual Studio 2019 tab provide information for using the Git experience as well as Team Explorer. To learn more, see Side-by-side comparison of Git and Team Explorer.

Open up the Changes view in Team Explorer. Select Actions and choose View History from the drop-down. In the history window that appears, right-click the commit to undo and select Revert from the context menu.

Command Line

> git revert 8437fbaf
> git commit

These commands will undo the changes made in commit 8437fbaf and create a new commit on the branch. The original commit at commit_id is still in the Git history. Revert is flexible but it requires a branch history and commit identifiers to use. Review your history to find the commits you want to revert.

Reset a branch to a previous state

Use reset to bring a branch in your local repository back to the contents of a previous commit. The most common use of the reset command is to simply discard all changed files since the last commit and return the files to the state they were in at the most recent commit.

Warning

Don't use reset on branches shared with others. Use revert instead.

Visual Studio

1. Open up the Changes view in Team Explorer.

2. Select Actions and choose View History from the drop-down.

3. In the history window that appears, right-click the commit to reset the repo to and select Reset from the context menu.

4. Choose Reset and delete changes....

   

Command Line

> git reset --hard HEAD 

The --hard part of the command tells Git to reset the files to the state of the previous commit and discard any staged changes. The HEAD argument tells Git to reset the local repository to the most recent commit. If you want to reset the repo to a different commit, provide the ID instead of HEAD.

A reset affects all files in the current branch on the repository, not just those in your current directory. Reset only discards changes that haven't been committed yet.

Next steps

Ignore files