The phrase "as it existed before" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it when referring to a previous state or condition of something that has changed or been altered.
Example: "The document was restored to its original format, as it existed before the edits were made."
Alternatives: "in its previous form" or "as it was previously".
Singer evokes in his writings the vanished world of Polish Jewry as it existed before the Holocaust.
What information can you find about the facility and/or community as it existed before the war?
During three and a half hours we got a description — in both Arabic and Hebrew — of the Arab city as it existed before 1948.
And one way of understanding this is as a call for a return to the novel as it existed before James came along.
The second election, to fill a one-month vacancy in the seat before the next Congress starts, is only for voters living in the First District as it existed before the redrawn boundaries.
This requires careful and intuitive examination of those files, and an attempt to avoid anything that might violate the truth of the story as it existed before a given writer's time.
The 35-room Manor Inn has been able to operate as an exception because it existed before the zoning law.
Obviously it existed before as a governmental way of transferring data but not for commercial purposes.
"The Deadly Toll of Abortion by Amateurs" (June 2) reminds me of the similar situation as it existed in this country before Roe v. Wade.
Furthermore, the approach only worked precisely because the Real IRA sought, through its name, to associate itself with the history of the IRA "as it existed in 1939" and before.
It is noted in the chapter that the available kinetics are formulated with the hydrogen ion concentration at room temperature as it existed in the laboratory before the furfural process, and not with the really active hydrogen ion concentration at the reaction temperature.
