I have what could be considered a love-hate relationship with the Auto Save function that appears in some programs. I certainly understand that having an automatic function making sure that whatever you happen to be working on is saved without you thinking about it is a great thing. It can save you time and brain space (and I’m all about saving brain space). That being said, being a slight control freak, I like knowing WHEN something has been saved.

1) On the good side

Even I will admit that having the Auto Save function is a good thing. Here’s the problem. We are all busy and making sure that everything is saved can become strangely complicated. It’s nice to have something that is working in the background so that no matter what the changes you make are, they will get saved. I do also like the fact that if you close something without saving it first, there are a couple of copies saved and you can bring up the different copies and choose which one is the one you want. I do like that. The problem of Auto Save doesn’t come from single usage (as in when you’re doing something on your own). The problem I find comes when you are working from a template.

2) On the other hand

Ok everyone, time for a little “Mia culpa” action. Even the IT person messes up every now and again. I have found that on a couple of occasions I have done some work that started from a template, which in theory is fine. The problem comes from when the Auto Save function would kick into action and make any changes that I happen to be making…to the template. One time I was doing some work and I thought I had done everything that I needed to properly. I saved it to my own drive and made sure that the template version was still on the shared drive. Everything was just fine. The problem occurred when one of my colleagues came to me and effectively said “Did you….uh….mean to save your stuff on the template?” ^sigh^ I would like to say that this was a one time occurrence for yours truly, and that having experienced this kind of mistake once before I clearly learned my lesson and would never do anything so foolhardy again. I would like to say that….Sadly, however. ANYWAY, I am not that thrilled that Auto Save made me look a bit foolish. I suppose the best I can offer you (and for me really) is that when you are working off a template document which is shared with other people, please take care to save it to your own drive BEFORE you start working on it. Once you do that the happy little Auto Save gremlin can do its thing and you won’t have to endure the teasing that I got.

3) Auto Save hot tips

There are a couple of things that you can do when it comes to using Auto Save properly. As discussed earlier, if you’re working from a communally accessible document on a shared drive or an intranet, make sure that you save a copy of the template to your own personal drive first, and then start working on it. That seems like advice even the simplest person could follow….and it only took me three different incidents to figure that out (Jason hangs his head in shame). If you experience frustrations with Auto Save, all you really can do (and I only advise this if you’re working on your own) is turn off Auto Save through settings in the program you’re using. Like I said, I would only advise doing this if you are working on documents by yourself and are not dealing with shared documents with other other users.

At the end of the day (and I say this begrudgingly) I actually think that Auto Save is a good thing. Yes I’ve had my own issues with it, but over all it is a function that does save a lot of time and effort. For sure, it’s one of the many tools that you have available to you and when you use it properly, it can come in handy. The trick will be making sure that you are aware that it’s there and (gulp) don’t save over template documents accidentally.

How do you feel about Auto Save?

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