Auto save didn't work?

users
#1

I'm using LO 4.0.4.2 on a Mac running 10.6.8

My son was working on a Writer doc for school, had made some big changes without saving, then the laptop ran out of juice and crashed. Autosave was set to 15 minutes but the majority of his changes had been made well over 15 minutes before the crash.

When we rebooted I assured him his changes would be saved, but upon opening and "recovering" the files, we were back where we started as if it hadn't saved since we'd opened the file (it had been created the day before). That was probably 45 minutes to an hour of work. He learned an important lesson but...

Can anyone hazard a guess at why LO would have failed to autosave? It's never failed to autosave before, and autosave has saved my keester on several occasions. But now I'm wondering if it's entirely reliable (not that autosave excuses me from manually saving my documents).

#2

Hi Carl,

I'm using LO 4.0.4.2 on a Mac running 10.6.8

Can anyone hazard a guess at why LO would have failed to autosave? It's
never failed to autosave before, and autosave has saved my keester on
several occasions. But now I'm wondering if it's entirely reliable (not
that autosave excuses me from manually saving my documents).

On Mac, when your battery is running out the system warns you in
advance, at least 9 minutes before sleep, and then it normally
hibernates, and OSX saves the state of applications at the time it shuts
down.

However, LO, at least in the 4.0.x versions (don't know if later
versions do better) doesn't know how to deal with this situation with
regard to temporary files that it creates (your autosave files are store
in a temporary file store), so they just get wiped from memory when the
app is shut down.

I guess your son has learned two things :

- save often when working with LO (but I would take that as a general
guideline for any app)

- when OSX tells you that you are running out of power, find a power
cable quickly or else save everything and then shutdown :wink:

Alex

#3

I would add that if LO autosave has saved your documents before in the
exact same circumstances, then you have been lucky...

Autosave doesn't work for database documents (ODB). The only way to get
embedded hsqldb ODB files saved properly is to hit the save button, and
quit LO completely.

Alex

#4

Hi Alex,

Is below statement only valid for a Mac or also for a PC with XP?

In the past (LibO version before 4.1.4.2 eg.4.0.5 or 6 and earlier) I never observed problems with autosave and recovery when LibO crashed.

Thanks in advance for your comment.

ROSt52

#5

I had a "crash" a few days ago, but it was not really one, but a system "forced shutdown". When I reopened LO [not the issue] it recovered the file properly.

I keep auto save at 5 minutes or less.

#6

Hi :slight_smile:
I tend to have auto-save off or set at much longer intervals.

Generally i tend to find that it takes almost no-time to re-type or
re-do anything that took under 20mins to do the 1st time around and
often there is an improvement 2nd time around anyway. Also i find it
really frustrating to have to stop mid-flow when i am cracking on with
something. It's too easy to get distracted in my office as it is
anyway. 20mins to half hour saves are usually more than enough and if
i do them myself then it's easier to remember to add 1 to the
documents version number to make sure i have an old version in easy
reach if something goes badly wrong.

Errr, my version numbers are a tad basic, none of this fancy 3 digit
and meaningful = i just stick a -v1 at the end and then up that number
at random intervals to get things like;
KhidmatSisters-poster-2014-Jan-v2
well not quite like that but it gives a rough idea. If i'm
collaborating with other people then i tend to occasionally sweep all
those older versions into a sub-folder, along with all my images,
potential images, logos, notes from elsewhere and other clutter. Then
a few months later i have a quick scroll through the sub-folder to see
if anything should be copied elsewhere and then delete the sub-folder.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#7

Hi,

Is below statement only valid for a Mac or also for a PC with XP?

This is my experience on Mac over the different versions of LO from
3.3.0 to present, and having moved through Snow Leopard to Lion to
Mountain Lion and now Mavericks.

I have seen issues in the past on Linux where autosave was activated and
didn't function as intended, i.e. it was impossible to recover anything,
but that was a while ago, and probably with Openoffice.org at the time.

Alex

#8

Thanks Alex. It was a helpful.