No Autosave in Word 2013?

[mike_ash]

Hi all,

 

It's exam season and in previous years I've not had much to do with the exams and saving documents has always been down the individual student. However this year the exams officer has asked that the technicians set up the machines so that the kids don't have to worry about anything other than their exam. So I've set word up with any auto correct / spell check disabled as normal and then wanted the document to "autosave" every couple of minutes. However when I look at the save options there doesn't seem to be an autosave function, only "auto recover". Which is fine, so if we have a power cut the document should be able to be recovered from the temporary file location. What happens though (worst case scenario) if the pupil doesn't click save at any point during their exam and then closes the word document and accidentally clicks "no" when asked "would you like to save your document". I'm pretty sure that this used to be available in word, is it hidden somewhere or does it just have a different name?

 

thanks,

 

Mike

[Tesla]

try this?

 

How to Change the Auto-Save Interval in Word 2013

[DalekSec]

I've been looking for this solution all day and haven't come up with anything, only difference is we are using 2010. Currently testing out the auto recover, only seems to work when you open the documents and on the side says there are other versions but it being locked down it wont open them... need a way for it to overwrite the save every 2mins

[localzuk]

There isn't such a feature that I know of. The auto-save is just part of auto-recovery. If there's no file saved at the beginning, then Word doesn't have any save information for the document at all.

 

One thing you could do is to pre-populate their Word documents - ie. create a blank document and save a copy of it into each student's storage area. That way, auto-save will be in place as they will open that instead of creating a new document.

 

Further to that idea, if you were to craft a timed macro that saves also, you would have that functionality completely - without the need for the recovery tool saves from Word.

Edited May 14, 2015 by localzuk

[tmcd35]

An idea...

 

Set the autorecover location to a volume you have volume shadow copy working on (or can set it up on). Set both to run every 1-2 minutes. If the student closes word without saving anything, hopefully there'll be something in auto recovery you can restore using previous versions?

[mike_ash]

I should have said that I do create a file for them to start with, which is stored on our servers, so the kids do only have to click the save button/ctrl+s. but even then I can't find an option for it to "autosave" and in the scenario that I gave I think I'm right in saying that once word is closed any auto recover information will be lost. I could try creating a macro, but that's going to be quite time consuming when I've got a class of 20, surely there's got to be an easier solution

[tmcd35]

I think I'm right in saying that once word is closed any auto recover information will be lost.

 

Yes, but if the auto recover information is stored on a drive protected by volume shadow copies, and the copies are being made regularly enough, you should be able to restore the last version of the auto recovery information from the folders previous versions - ie from before word deleted it on exit. Thus you could use that to trick word into recovering the document and then saving it as normal. Long winded but should work as a fail safe.

 

(note I've not actually test this, but can't see why it won't work - in theory)

[localzuk]

I should have said that I do create a file for them to start with, which is stored on our servers, so the kids do only have to click the save button/ctrl+s. but even then I can't find an option for it to "autosave" and in the scenario that I gave I think I'm right in saying that once word is closed any auto recover information will be lost. I could try creating a macro, but that's going to be quite time consuming when I've got a class of 20, surely there's got to be an easier solution

 

Not sure how this would be time consuming at all?

 

Surely you just create a single word document, with the following code as a macro, and then copy that file out to everyone's saving area? Wouldn't be more than 2 minutes work.

 

[color=#000000]Sub AutoOpen()[/color]   
WordSaver
End Sub
Sub WordSaver()
   Application.OnTime When:=Now + _
     TimeValue("00:02:00"), _
     Name:="Saver"
End Sub
Sub Saver()
   ActiveDocument.Save
   WordSaver
End Sub

 

Code from here: http://word.tips.net/T000157_A_Real_AutoSave.html

Edited May 14, 2015 by localzuk

[tmcd35]

There's also the Word GPO setting - "Keep the last AutoSaved versions of files for the next Session" in User Config\Admin Templates\Word 2013\Word Options\Save

[mike_ash]

Not sure how this would be time consuming at all?

 

Surely you just create a single word document, with the following code as a macro, and then copy that file out to everyone's saving area? Wouldn't be more than 2 minutes work.

 

[color=#000000]Sub AutoOpen()[/color]   
WordSaver
End Sub
Sub WordSaver()
   Application.OnTime When:=Now + _
     TimeValue("00:02:00"), _
     Name:="Saver"
End Sub
Sub Saver()
   ActiveDocument.Save
   WordSaver
End Sub

 

Code from here: A Real AutoSave (Microsoft Word)

 

Apologies, didn't realise the macro would be so straight forward to set up, haven't tried it yet but will give it a go, thanks. Still can't believe that this function doesn't exist as I'm pretty sure that in a previous version of office maybe office 2000 that once you had initially saved a document it would then save automatically every 10 mins or so

 

thanks,

 

Mike