I remember WAY back when I started using a computer. My husband brought home a loaner portable computer. I can’t even call it a laptop because it was SO big and heavy! We didn’t yet have a home computer (I told you — the Dark Ages), so I was borrowing it to write some papers for grad school. The only problem was that it wasn’t a great computer so it kept freezing up. When I restarted it, I had lost lots of work because Auto Save didn’t yet exist. It was frustrating, to put it mildly. I may or may not have also lost my patience quite a few times and said words I shouldn’t have.
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That used to happen in my Silhouette software as well. Every once in a while I would do something that would crash the software. Inevitably, it would happen on a large file and I would end up losing lots of work. Yes, I know I should have been saving periodically, but you know what it’s like when your creative juices get going and you forget that kind of stuff.
That’s why I’m SO grateful that beginning in version 3 of the Silhouette Studio software, the developers included an Auto Save feature. I try to remember to save my work at the end of the day, but sometimes I forget. Then my computer does a Windows update and restarts. That’s when the Auto Save literally saves ME. Today, I’m going to give you some tips about using Auto Save, including how to find and/or get rid of the documents the software saved.
How do I turn Auto Save on and off?
You don’t have to do anything to turn the Auto Save on. It’s automatic within the software. As for turning it off — you can’t. So you might as well learn how to use it properly.
What does Auto Save do?
At regular, periodic intervals, the software saves all the files you have open. You won’t see a message that it’s going on. It’s just working in the background. You may, however, notice that once in a while your software pauses when you don’t seem to be doing anything crazy. That’s probably the Auto Save happening.
If you have lots of files open or have lots of graphics (fill patterns or photos), the Auto Save can take a long time. This is particularly true if you have Include Cut Data checked in your Preferences (see more on that in this post.) For that reason, it’s a good idea to keep the Include Cut Data setting off if you don’t need it.
When you close the software as normal, the software knows whether or not you have saved changes. If you haven’t it asks you if you want to. But if your software quits unexpectedly — it freezes and you have to force quit, your laptop battery dies, etc. — that doesn’t happen. So, the software keeps a copy of all the open files and all the changes to them up to the point of the last Auto Save. It will save them until you tell it otherwise.
You won’t necessarily get back to exactly where you were when the software closed. That’s because the Auto Save is continuous but not constant. In other words, it only happens at set intervals of time. But you’ll probably be way ahead of where you would have been without it. And it does not save your list of actions. In other words, you can’t use the Undo button to try to go back. That’s just like with any file you’re working on that you close.
Where does the software save the documents?
The software saves the files in a special temporary file, not to your normal save location. For example, let’s say you created on a file, saved it into a folder on your hard drive or in your library you’ve named Birthday Cards, opened it to work on it some more and the software crashed. The file will not be auto saved into that Birthday Cards folder. That’s just in case you didn’t want to overwrite the version of the file you saved previously.
How do I open the Auto Saved files?
When your software closes unexpectedly and then you open it again, you’ll see a panel that opens at the right called Recovered Documents.
That’s how you find the version the software was keeping for you temporarily. Click on the name of the file to open it. Then when you close that file, the software will open either your computer’s folder menu or library (depending on your save option preference). In other words, if it’s one you had worked on and saved previously, it doesn’t automatically save it there. It checks with you so it knows for sure where you want to put this new version and if you want to overwrite the previously saved one.
If you close that Recovered Documents panel and need to open it again during that software session, you can do that in the File>Open Recovered drop down menu.
What do I need to know about the Recovered Documents list?
Normally, when you close the software it asks you if you want to save any files that have changes you haven’t yet saved in this software session. Since the software wasn’t able to ask you that if it closed unexpectedly, it keeps all the files you had open at the time the software closed. They are all in that Recovered Documents list.
They will stay there until you deal with them. It’s like problems — ignoring them won’t make them go away. But even if it’s “out of sight, out of mind” for you, the software remembers. So it keeps opening that panel every time you open the software to remind you to take care of them all.
You can just close the panel using the “x” in the upper right corner, or by opening another panel (depending on your panel mode preference). But, as I said, that only hides them. They are still in that temporary file, and that can make a difference.
Here’s why: even though the files aren’t open, the software is holding them in memory. That means there’s less room in it’s temporary memory for other data. What else is saved in temporary memory? ALL the actions you perform on a file that’s open. That’s so you can use the undo button endlessly until you close a file. So when you’ve also got the auto saved documents in there, it gets overloaded and can bog down the software. It can even cause problems like stray lines cut in your design or the full design not cutting.
Keep it cleared out!
SO — you want to keep that panel cleaned up. Opening the file and saving it yourself doesn’t do that. You have to manually discard those temporarily saved files. There’s a button at the bottom to discard them all at once. To delete them one at at time, hover over a file name and you’ll see the option Discard at the right.
Discard means throw the file away forever. Because it’s a permanent action, the software makes sure you want to do this.
This is the most important thing to know about Auto Save! It’s like changing the oil on your car — pay me now, or pay me later. To keep your software running smoothly, keep the Recovered Documents panel cleared out..
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