I Lost All My Work

I belong to a number of Microsoft Office Word user forums and an unfortunate recurring theme is from people in distress who have lost their work. Either in the subject area or body of their posting they yell, “WORD’S AUTOSAVE DOESN’T WORK!”

Please read the following very carefully: Word does not have an Auto Save feature.

There’s a setting in Word Options > Save called Auto Recovery and unfortunately many have believed this equates to an auto save function, which it absolutely does not. Auto Recovery is a compiled snapshot of your document created from the accumulated changes since you last physically clicked save. The Auto Recovery file that Word keeps is only a temporary file that contains a pointer to the current file, saved on disk, and the changes made to it during the last time Word was open.

Auto Recovery is not a revision control time machine; you can’t go back further than the last time Auto Recovery took a snapshot of the open documents at that moment. Every time Auto Recovery runs it clears its folder of documents that are no longer open. If you accidently close a file and not save changes, you definitely can’t get them back by relying on your Auto Recovery if it’s taken a new snapshot.

The sole purpose of Auto Recovery is to restore your open documents, the best it can, in the event of a system crash. If you try to rely on it for more than that, you’re in for a major disappointment. Here’s also a tip: Leave the time setting on Auto Recovery alone. Setting it’s frequency to less than 10 minutes drags down your systems performance, and can actually hurt your ability, under some circumstances, to effectively recover files.

So what should you be doing? Save, Save, and Save, Backup, Backup, and Backup.

Every time you pause to think about what to type next, press Control + S. Turn on your automatic backup feature as well. With this on, every time you save, Word will create an actual backup file of your document. It places it in the same directory as the original.

To find this feature go to the Word Options > Advanced > Save menu.

If you’re working on files from a Network drive, I also recommend choosing from this same menu, the option to “Copy remotely stored files onto your computer …” This feature will provide another level of protection if your Network drive hiccups while you’re working on a document. It also helps your system perform faster while editing.

Losing an important file is tragic and you could have prevented it. It’s no one else’s fault but your own. That’s a tough message to hear but it needs to be said. I encourage you to get moving today on creating a good thoughtful backup plan for your computer overall as well as your individual files and documents. Otherwise here’s a movie quote to ponder.
“…you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya …”

More information about these backup features of Word is available from the following Microsoft Office help link. http://bit.ly/dEl8U7