News, Tips, and Advice for Technology Professionals

Use Word's AutoRecover option to avoid lost work

If users can't remember to save their work on a regular basis, get Word to do it for them.

A lot of Word users forget to save their work regularly. And those who do remember find it a bit of a nuisance to stop what they're doing every few minutes to save the file. To be safe, set Word to save their documents automatically at regular intervals, as follows:

From the Tools menu, choose Options, and click the Save tab. In Word 2007, click the Office button, click Word Options, and then select Save in the left pane.
Check the Save AutoRecover Info Every option in the Save Options section (Save Documents section in 2007).
Select a minute interval from the Minute control. You can choose a value by clicking the up and down arrows or just enter the number from the keyboard.
Click OK.

Of course, users can still click the Save icon or press [Ctrl]+S to save their documents at any time. To save changes to all open documents, hold down the [Shift] key and choose Save All from the File menu. (The Save All command appears only with the [Shift] key.)

About Susan Harkins

Susan Sales Harkins is an IT consultant, specializing in desktop solutions. Previously, she was editor in chief for The Cobb Group, the world's largest publisher of technical journals.