This is about the most recent version of LibreOffice on Windows 10. I can’t speak for other versions.
My daughter worked hard on her social studies essay. I type things in for her because she’s a really bad typist, but she tells me what to write… but I didn’t remember to manually save her social studies essay yesterday, and for some reason the ThinkPad rebooted, LibreOffice crashed and we lost the whole thing… because autosave was not automatically on when I installed it.
No, recovery didn’t work. We just got a blank file.
I rewrote it for her based on the information we had and what I remembered and tried to make it sound like what a 13-year-old would write because it was basically my fault and she did do the work. I did have her sit with me as I wrote it in case she didn’t like something I wrote, but it was sort of cheating. I’m okay with that cheating since I know she worked hard on it.
First, though, I went into the settings and turned on autosave.
I like LibreOffice, but why the hell is that not on automatically? Honestly, I don’t really understand why someone wouldn’t want their documents autosaved, but I’m pretty sure most people would want that.
This isn’t fucking 1993. I shouldn’t have to remember to save a document anymore and it shouldn’t be lost forever because of it.
Like I said, I like LibreOffice. I don’t really want to trust documents to Microsoft or Google. But this was really annoying.
Thanks, didn’t know it had an autosave feature, but I do now. Your story is appreciated
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I was curious and found this thread.
https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/libreoffice-writer-crash-and-autosave-is-off-by-default/92416/4
Apparently the newest version will enable auto save by default. Not sure why it wasn’t that way to begin with…
I dislike autosaves in word processors/spreadsheets etc and turn them off whenever I can. I prefer to have that control, I have had issues where I have deleted things to rewrite/update them, decide against it and close the app only to find it’s overwritten what I had done…
Fair enough… it is impossible to make everyone happy lol.
I don’t mind auto saving in places that keep versioning. But by default for LibreOffice does sound as dangerous as not having it.
Not really, you can leave auto save on, and use the inbuilt track changes function. Best of both worlds.
Have you tried using file versioning, or using review (track changes) functions to propose changes so you can choose to accept edits or decide against them? It’s like there are specific features for this scenario that allow you to save, have backups and have that control.
yeh, those are solutions, I was just explaining how its not automatically better.
Latex documents in git are the best option technically, but good luck getting the average person (or me!) to do that.
She didn’t lose her essay because the software didn’t autosave, she lost her essay because she didn’t save!
LMAO blaming the software because you’re too dumb to hit Ctrl + s. Presumably you’re old enough to have been taught to save often. Now maybe your daughter will learn from your fuck up and actually SAVE HER WORK.
Also she’s never going to learn to type well if you just do it for her. Get her Mavis Beacon for Christmas this year and stop doing her homework for her.
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Furthermore, if the laptop randomly reboots for no reason, autosave won’t save you. You just need a tiny bit of bad luck for the computer to crash while saving, corrupting the perfectly-good file saved to disk.
Hardly how file saving works. Else you could say the same about a bit of bad luck for the computer to crash while pressing ctrl-s, corrupting the perfectly-good file saved on disk.
Too many people on this thread seem to see autosave and ctrl-s as two different things, governed by magic and mystery, one of them indispensable to conside nyourself an experienced computer user. It’s the same fucking piece of code, in one case invoked by a timer, in the other one by the end user pressing a key combo.
Op’s issue was that automated was disabled by default. Obviously autosave doesn’t work it it’s disabled.
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It doesn’t take any money at all to learn touch typing: just google “learn to touch type” and there’s Mavis Beacon type software just written in js, totally free.
All that’s required is the discipline. If OP’s daughter sits with it 5 minutes a day she’ll be able to touch type in no time.
Learning as young as possible is the right move.
Mavis Beacon haha. For something not ancient, https://www.typingclub.com.
This makes op a bad parent. Know this first op… The luxury of autosave is the least of your worries.
It doesn’t make them a bad parent. They are just making a poor choice out of what I assume is good intentions.
or instead of throwing more data/money at Big Tech try one of the self hosted instances of https://nextcloud.com/office/ or https://cryptpad.org/
There are free 10 finger typing classes online. Frankly it’s a bit fun, similar to learning an instrument! I did one during downtime at work because I was a 6/7 finger typer, and always had to look for numbers or punctuation other than . , ! ?
Jesus never loses any data.
Because Jesus saves.
Autosave should always be seen as a back up option that covers unexpected closes or whatever. It shouldn’t really be a thing to rely on as the main option.
You never have to worry about a document saving if you make sure it’s actually saved by manually saving before closing.
Everyone learns compulsive ctrl-s eventually.
I guess it’s about what one’s used to. I’d be pretty annoyed if it started overwriting my documents when I when I do not explicitly tell it to do that.
I copy something from the document, maybe hit cut instead of copy. Now it’s gone from the original.
Learning how to properly save and backup is the more important lesson anyway.
No Backup no pity
to be fair, word doesn’t autosave either (unless you’re using onedrive)
At work i use a $800 proprietary shit software that has a 70% chance of crashing when printing (so it crashes when job is done)
So I got used to Ctrl+S every. Single. Sentence.
Windows 10 home loves to automatically reboot to install the fucking updates IMMEDIATELY. RIGHT. NOW. And Microsoft pushed some big update just a few days ago. When LibreOffice crashes usually there’s a recovery feature. It’s windows. Windows wanted to install the fucking updates and it told LibreOffice to gracefully close RIGHT NOW, and NO, THE USER DOESN’T WANT TO SAVE, the user wants to get updates immediately ASAP
Btw automatically saving is a generally undesirable feature as it could reduce the lifetime of ssds, slowdown the system if the file Is big or stored on slow media like network.
Windows 10 home loves to automatically reboot to install the fucking updates IMMEDIATELY. RIGHT. NOW
No it doesn’t. Maybe it can happen if you neglect to reboot your pc in ages but normally it never ever happens.
It hasn’t happened to me ever and won’t because I shutdown the computer at night.
You have clearly never used windows in a corporate or education environment. They are nothing but cruel with the update policies
That’s your IT department policy they’ve set, not Windows. Source: am IT and was part of implementing that type of policy at my work because users never fucking apply updates.
So the solution to forced rebooting is to have to suffer through the ridiculous boot times for windows every day?
Patchday is once a month. No need to reboot every day. Also, what “ridiculous boot time”? What hardware do you have?
Sure. Linux boots faster. But boot time on Windows is still measured in seconds.
Just let Windows update occasionally.
Timeline of Windows users:
Users: Fuck you Microsoft why do I get viruses*?
MS: Okay we will give you security updates.
Users: No, I don’t want to update or ever reboot, you idiot.
MS: Okay, you do you.
Users: Why do I still get viruses?
MS: How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?
Users: Just fix it.
MS: Fine.
Users: Why is my computer rebooting?*Virus in this context refers to any security problems.
I just disable windows updates so it never restarts to update
I mean, it sucks but it is best practice.
Btw automatically saving is a generally undesirable feature as it could reduce the lifetime of ssds, slowdown the system if the file Is big or stored on slow media like network.
I don’t know what kind of files you write regularly, but even the smallest and cheapest PCIe 3.0 NVMe drive can store data at 600 megabytes per second or more. That’s plenty fast enough for my office documents at least. And you can rewrite the entire contents of the drive a hundred times or more before it fails. So I wouldn’t lose any sleep over having autosave on.
Is this SSD failure after 100 rewrites localized? Or is it just the sum total of data saved to it that causes this? Because if it’s localized, autosave is gonna use up your 100 safe writes in the first hour.
It’s the sum total. SSD’s would have become the success they are today if it were localized.
Is it 2020 design, that crashed when you try to print the 3D renders?
Unless she is has some sort of disability, you typing for her just seems like enablement.
