Word Office Help

[NicolaCassidy]

Can anyone help me - when you close a word document and it asks if you want to save changes - if you click no by mistake (instead of yes), is that it lost forever or is it in some temporary file somewhere?

Thanks,
Nicola

 

Depends if you have autosave switched on it. If you have, what will be saved will be everything up to when it last autosaved, which if it was only seconds before you closed the doc, will be pretty much all of it. If you manually save (as I do, because there are hidden problems with autosave), only what you last saved manually will still be there.

 

[Xander Design]

I think autosave is on by default on all computers is it not, so unless you have altered it it should be saved to My Documents from what I can remember.

 

[NicolaCassidy]

Thanks Plaintext - looks like it will have to started from near scratch as autosave isn't switched on

Nicola

 

[compuclean]

That's a shame - but something positive to think about - at least you'll turn it on now, and if it happens again, all won't be lost!

Another positive thing - wine. Wine makes all things positive.

 

[NicolaCassidy]

lol - thats very true!!! For future reference then, where would it save the copy?

 

[compuclean]

You need to save it first, then it will keep saving it every ten minutes, or whatever you specify.

 

I'd be very careful of autosave - it may seem convenient but it clogs up your temp folder as it saves a new copy every time it saves. And it also adds lots of size to your original Word file, which takes up yet more space.

Better to train yourself to save manually and just keep hitting Control-S every few minutes.

 

[compuclean]

I'd be very careful of autosave - it may seem convenient but it clogs up your temp folder as it saves a new copy every time it saves. And it also adds lots of size to your original Word file, which takes up yet more space.

Better to train yourself to save manually and just keep hitting Control-S every few minutes.

That's what I do - at the end of each paragraph, CTRL S. It now comes as naturally as hitting return.

 

Yes, I learned a hard lesson many years ago. Back in the days before Windows (late 80s), the computer would save everything every 5 mins, and I was new to the computer lark and happy for the computer to do stuff like saving...

Then I went to work somewhere else and it was all on Macs. And Macs back then didn't autosave. And one day we had a split-second power cut and I lost a massive file that I'd worked on for more than an hour. I almost wept. And I had to do the whole thing from scratch...

I learned very quickly then to use Control-S and it's as automatic as breathing now! As Compuclean says, every couple of mins...