Unscheduled power outages, malfunctions with equipment or accidental cancellation of storage - and an important report or a large amount of text are irretrievably lost. But is it irreversible? Auto-save in Word saved more than one user who, by the will of circumstances or his own carelessness, canceled the saving of the document. The program automatically saves files that are edited every ten minutes.
Default options
Autosave in Word 2007 and all other versions of the common office program is enabled by default. If everything works smoothly and without delay, then the user does not even notice the function. Information that the document was automatically saved appears every ten minutes on the bottom panel of the program, in the same place as the statistics buttons, a slider for changing the scale and modes (web page, reading, layout mode), and also the language and the current page are displayed .
It is important that you should not completely replace the standard saving of documents (the “File” command, and then “Save As ...”) with automatic. This is only an emergency measure, which cannot be used as the main method of conservation. The function may fail, therefore, it is better to automatically restore a document only if it is really necessary.
When the autosave function is on, if any failure occurs, you can lose a maximum of the last ten minutes of operation. And even less - it all depends on the time of the last save. The default settings can be changed manually so that autosave in Word occurs more often or less.
Manual autosave settings
In any version of the office program, the function of automatic document saving can be configured independently, depending on the needs of a particular user. How to set up autosave in Word?
In new versions (2010-2016), to configure, open the File tab, select Options, and then Save. The function enable flag is set in the lines "Autosave every X minutes" and "Keep the latest version when closing without saving." In the first line X should be replaced with the required frequency of document saving in minutes.
In Word 2007, the function is turned on differently: you must click the round Microsoft Office button, then select "Save", check the box "Enable autosave" and specify the desired frequency. There you can change the place where the files will be automatically saved.
Restore autosaved document
After a malfunction, autosave in Word at the next start will offer to restore the missing document at the next start of the office program. As a rule, the window that appears to the left of a blank sheet contains a listing of all versions of the document or only the last save is displayed. By clicking on one of the available files, you can restore the document. Be sure to display the missing text on the screen in the usual way.
Also, lost files can be found in the "backup" folder. Its location can be found in the "Options" ("Save" tab) by calling the "File" menu. You need to copy the address to the clipboard (Ctrl + C), and then paste (Ctrl + V) the path into the address bar of the standard explorer.
What problems may arise
Weak computers with an old hardware or a small amount of free memory can behave badly when autosaved: get stuck, lag and pester with requests. Even the standard periodicity sometimes causes delays, which significantly slows down the work on the document, let alone the cases when Word autosaves every one to two minutes.
An alternative method used in order not to lose files in case of unexpected failures is to transfer work with documents to cloud storage. Google Docs, for example, allows you to create online documents, presentations and spreadsheets with the ability to access them from any computer and shared access (read or comment) by permission of the author.
Auto-save in Word often gets stuck, and the service from the information giant quickly saves every file improvement, does not slow down and has a laconic design with all the necessary functions. Another alternative is Microsoft Office Online. The online version limits some possibilities, but basically works well.