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Auto save for InDesign documents?

Forum|Forum|12 years ago
December 17, 2013
9 replies
55080 views

Is there a way to set InDesign to automatically save a document every 15 minutes (or some other time period) while it's being worked on? When we used Quark we had that option, but see nothing like it in InDesign.

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Correct answer Peter Spier

I'd ask over in the scripting forum to see if it's possible to set up a script that would run automatically on file open and save a copy periodically, or perhaps better, one that would run on file close. InDesign Scripting

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Rickyaz

Known Participant

Wow Adobe, wow. If you really want to push your Creative Cloud then you need an autosave feature like you find in Office 365 & Google Docs. It is 2021, get with the times.

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lancem25316445

Participating Frequently

I'm with you on this. Quark, which saved versions, allowed you to go back to a previous version if some mistake or error was made in the document (or your art director changed his mind suddenly and wanted a previous version after all). For example, I was working on a document and wanted to make a serious change to see how it looked. I saved the document then resaved it as something else (V2).

The original document reverted to the last saved state PREVIOUSLY, loosing 4 hours of work (Another fabulous Quark feature was auto-save,,,something also missing from InDesign)

The V2 document, without any of the 4 hours of work in it wouldn't undo from the save point.

In Quark, it would simply be a matter of closing the documents and opening the last revision prior to the save (you could set this as a default to save up to 10 versions) I can assure you, this is a VALUABLE feature and has saved me over the years. As a new InDesign user i find lack of version saves a reprehensible omission.

rob day

Community Expert

As a new InDesign user i find lack of version saves a reprehensible omission.

See Rob.Wood's #27—it can be done with Adobe's cloud service. Drobbox will also do it as long as you work in your Dropbox root folder. If you don't want to use a cloud service it can also be scripted.

This layout is in my user folder's Creative Cloud Files folder, so if want to retrieve an incremental backup it's just a matter of clicking view on web where I would have the option of restoring a version

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Alastair L

Inspiring

no doubt this is why Adobe avoids adding it to InDesign as an app level feature set.

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Rob.Wood

Inspiring

Hello. If you save your InDesign files to Adobe's Cloud Storage it keeps versions, which you can access and restore via the web interface. It's the same with Dropbox, so if you set up a script to save at intervals you can use the cloud restore in place of "revert".

It also means that if a colleague save changes to a file without making a backup copy you can revert from the cloud.

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kind_days15B9

Inspiring

Thanks all for your suggestions and even a little bit of empathy.

IMHO, it wouldn't take much for Adobe to enhance their backup. Like I said before, the Adobe suite is the only application where I have experienced troubles with lost files... I think about less than ten times in about six years... but still, very discouraging when it happens.

No, I am not going to buy a UPS (LOL)... this is a work computer and I cannot even justify the expense considering that Adobe is only about 25% of my workload and it's the only application where I could lose data as a result of a power outage. All my other applications are a lot smarter or are cloud based.

rob day wrote:

The obvious downside of this simple script is, you might not always want to save—it will effectively disable the revert command.

Yes, that would be worse.

Until Adobe actually makes an improvement, I will stick to disciplining myself to perform manual backups on a regular basis and I promise not to complain any more about this. After yesterday's loss, it will be my fault to allow this to happen again!

Thanks all,

Shawn

Peter Spier

Community Expert

shawninvancouver wrote:
No, I am not going to buy a UPS (LOL)... this is a work computer and I cannot even justify the expense considering that Adobe is only about 25% of my workload and it's the only application where I could lose data as a result of a power outage.

YOU shouldn't buy the UPS, your company should. Seems like it would be worth the $50 to them not to lose anything due to power failure when it can be prevented that easily.

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kind_days15B9

Inspiring

I just discovered another way in while Autorecovery doesn't work.

If you close InDesign on unsaved work, the autorecovery data is inexplicably erased. Earlier in this thread, someone actually complained about this.

Anyhow, I sent in another feature request, here: Feature Request/Bug Report Form

With the following text:

How would you like the feature to work?

In addition to the current autorecovery, allow the end-user to configure, at regular intervals, the ability to save an open document to a selected location (i.e. a specific volume/folder or to a cloud location - i.e. Adobe's storage cloud).

Why is this feature important to you?

Because autorecovery can fail! There are many situations where it is unsuccessful. Some examples: Accidentally answering NO to Save File after an InDesign shutdown request; a hard drive failure - on the drive where autorecovery currently stores data. In my case -today- nothing was saved in the ..\InDesign Recovery folder, after a power failure.

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saholmes99

Participant

This thread is not FALSE!!!! You will lose hours and hours of work if you wait between saves. Just happened to me and abode has no support. This is for the adobe inDesign 11.0.1.105.

Total unacceptable that a backup file is not made!! It is the 21st century.

-Scott

K

kind_days15B9

Inspiring

I just lost about 1 hour of work due to a power outage! That may not seem like a huge loss but it is very discouraging. Especially considering that I've been asking Adobe to add this really simple and highly useful addition to ALL their products for YEARS!

I remember in the 1990's, Word Perfect would also save documents after x number of keystrokes. A brilliant addition that saved countless people from grief.

I know there are a number of Adobe apologists (whom I still respect) who don't understand the need for a flexible auto-backup but that is only because you haven't suffered. Believe me, when it happens to you, I predict that you will change your tune.

Now, my work-around has always been to have the discipline to backup on a regular basis... using filename versioning (i.e. document_1.00, document_1.01, etc.) that way, even with the low possibility of file corruption, it will have several versions to choose from. Additionally, my working folders are also sync'd to the cloud with Dropbox's excellent sync tool. The only problem is that I must actually remember to save on a regular basis! This time I forgot!

Wow... just noticed that EVEN THIS FORUM AUTOSAVES... just looking in the lower left-corner, I see, "Your content was last auto-saved at 12:03 "... perhaps Adobe should consult with the web team that created this forum.

Anyway, enough wasting time... I need to recreate an InDesign document!

Peter Spier

Community Expert

Buy yourself a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Source), better known as a battery backup. There is no excuse not to have one considering how inexpensive they are. You'll never go down in a power failure.

John Mensinger

Community Expert

As already mentioned; there's nothing to set. InDesign's auto-recovery seems like old hat now that I've enjoyed its benefits for years, but it's better at butt-saving than any other recovery feature I've ever seen.

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mlonthebeachAuthor

Participant

Agreed, the auto-recovery feature is great for power outages or improper shutdown. Had someone on my staff 'goof' and lost yesterday's work prompting me to research what we previously had in Quark. Thanks for the input everyone.

Peter Spier

Correct answer

Community Expert

I'd ask over in the scripting forum to see if it's possible to set up a script that would run automatically on file open and save a copy periodically, or perhaps better, one that would run on file close. InDesign Scripting

Daniel Flavin

Inspiring

InDesign keeps a "near real time version" mirror copy of all open files.

You will not close a file without being prompted to Save if changes have been made and if InDesign or the OS crashes, the mirror copy will open upon InDesign's next launch.

It works well, but could be a few edits short.

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mlonthebeachAuthor

Participant

BUT if someone mistakenly responds "no" when asked if they want to save, is there any version saved automatically? Guessing there's no way to set InDesign to do a regularly scheduled auto save as we did in Quark.

Daniel Flavin

Inspiring

Nope

Peter Spier

Community Expert

InDesign has an autorecovery feature that records every change and writes it to a recovery file. In the case of an imporper shutdown, ID will automatically attempt to open the recovery file when you restart the application, and is usually successful unless something has corrupted the data it contains (this does happen, but the feature is extremely robust). If succesful you generazlly will not lose more than a few minutes work, if any.

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drasahershoff

Participating Frequently

Scott is correct.. there is NO working autosave, and cant find a plugin to do it...

In my experience 90% crashing documents (and there LOADS of those in InDesign, very flawed) are NOT RECOVERED.

This has persisted at least since earliest versions of CC and long before.

Hours of work are easily lost if you are immersed enough to forget to save manually.

It is REPREHENSIBLE that Adobe is 10 years behind in such a simple software task. AND THEY DONT CARE!!!!

Peter Spier

Community Expert

If you experience crashing documents on a regular basis it's much more likely a local system problem (i.e. something on your own computer) than a problem with InDesign itself, though the latest release seems to have a few more bugs than normal. Your assertion that this has been going on since long before CC leads me to think the problem is on your system as there is no history of InDesign instability similar to your description.

Other than with documents known to crash other users systems (opened for testing and diagnosis), I don't believe I see more than one crash per year here, and I would say that is pretty typical.

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