# How to edit past commit messages, not only previous one.

At my work, I was assigned to a new project and tried to push my commits to the repo for the first time. 

I was excited about it. 

```$ git push```

And I got this error: ```[rejected] error: failed to push some refs to```

Yes, I got denied...

That was because my project team has a certain rule that every time I push to a repo, I needed to add an issue number for every commit message. And I didn't know about it.

Until that time, I only knew about editing the last commit message by hitting <br> ```$ git commit --amend --no-edit```. But this is not the case.

## The Solution:
For going back to the previous commit message, you need to use this command: <br>
``` $ git rebase --interactive ```

To demonstrate this, I created a sample project which has 4 commits as below.
Let's edit the third commit message with the commit #: 014856c06a23d69d9ea3b974ec3d3161e5815b2c.

![screenshots_11.45.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1652512812029/la2MksLmI.png align="left")

### 1.```$ git rebase --i HEAD~3```
Hit ```$ git rebase --i HEAD~3``` in the terminal for going back through three previous commits history.
![screenshots_.54.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1652539059346/cjCEduEBn.png align="left")

### 2.Hit ```i``` to switch to edit mode
After seeing the screen as above, hit ```i``` for an edit mode in vim. so you can edit the message. 
Change "pick" for the the commit #: 014856c06a23d69d9ea3b974ec3d3161e5815b2c to "edit".

![screenshots_27.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1652578427949/nbbOvVhgJ.png align="left")

Hit ```etc``` to exit from the edit mode and hit ```:wq``` to save and quit.

![screenshots_6.38.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1652591882164/wksNtQjRS.png align="left")

### 3.```$git commit --amend -m ""``` to change the commit message.
In this case, I want to add an issue number after the message as below.<br>
```$git commit --amend -m "changed background to green #1234"``` 

![screenshots_44.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1652591837301/Rcy5P1x8r.png align="left")

Hit ```$git log```and check the previous commit message has been changed to the new one as below.

![screenshots_7.16.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1652591753181/RSw9ySeNJ.png align="left")

### 4.```$git rebase --continue``` to finish the process.
It's not quite done until you run ```$ git rebase --continue```. After running the command, check the commit history by hitting ```$ git log``` so you can see the commit history has been overwritten.

![screenshots_26.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1652591696679/OiD3RQiBz.png align="left")
***Warning**<br>
If you've already pushed the commits to the remote repository that your teammates work with, you should avoid using ```$git rebase```. 

This useful ```$git rebase --interactive``` command also can be used for squashing and even removing commits.

I hope this helps someone who's trying to edit past commit messages.