You did what? Oh, you dummy.

It was a perfect afternoon for sunshine, chirping birds, fantastic iced coffee – an ideal ambiance.
It, too, was the day I’d work 3 hours on a document without saving it.
Yep, 3 hours. Without saving it.
Without. Saving it. (Stop laughing).
As anyone who’s ever lost that pages-long email just before sending it will understand – what I’d written was good. A dead ace.
With a groovy combination of Joss Stone & The Kinks, we’d covered – as a team – 14 pages of fantastique. Not one word of which I’d saved.
“You had me, you lost me,” the file smirked, disappearing into the ether.
I was left alone, bereft. Just me & my Sunny Afternoon.
Didn’t think it was possible to work that long without some sort of auto-save kicking in, did you?
Yea, well, tremble with fear if you’re a Mac user with iWork’s Pages. It can’t, won’t, doesn’t auto-save. Turns out Word’s auto-save isn’t much to shout about, either.
Dial up these presets & preferences – a little “anti-stupid” campaign. It happens to the best of us, I can now assure you.
Word auto-recover
- Lots of technical looking stuff for Windows users, c/o their Microsoft Big Daddy. Note that their offering is an auto recover – not an auto save.
iWork Pages add-ons
- Download WorkSaver
- Buy ForeverSave (US$9.99)
- And enjoy the ultimate irony that the wee TextEdit app (Apple’s notepad equivalent) has a fantastic auto-save.
We know the ideal solution – save the bloody thing! So, whilst on the subject, peruse further….
Safety first!
- Web Worker Daily on playing (and winning) at DIY tech support
- More Web Worker Daily on backing up your social media (god forbid you lose a tweet)
- Barkings warns that your iPhone recovery plan might need another look
- Michael Gray’s version of doomsday prep – how to back up pretty much everything
Applaud me for typing this with one hand. The other has been – and forever will be – permanently attached to “Ctrl + S”.
Signing off good & humbled,
Lauren