Auto-save was not feasible for Illustrator until Illustrator was 64Bit in nature. CS6 is now 64Bit. It's my hope that in the future more changes will be made which were not possible in the 32Bit app.
There were scripts and other techniques to allow auto-saving for years. Therefore, it is clearly not true that auto-saving was not possible before AI was 64 bit. I continually wonder how After Effects and far more powerful software like 3ds max can have autosave for (15+ years in the case of Max) and poor little Illustrator does not. This is just another example of pathetically bad and user-unfriendly software programming by Adobe. I requested Auto-save at least 10 years ago to the Adobe wishlist. Still waiting. Every time I lose work I've done in Illustrator I internally bless Adobe for their great work.
is totally stupid to not have an autosae future on illustrator cs6, it is a basic UX feature, yet Adobe enjoys making people suffer it seems... Good way to loose users...
Absolutely maddening. I'm sure I lose 10 to 20 hours a year, and I'm not alone; multiply that by the thousand+ people in my company that use Illustrator and you've got nearly half of a million dollars of wasted time, just within my company, purely because Adobe can't figure out how to incorporate an auto-save feature.
Inkscape has an autosave feature but of course isn't nearly as comprehensive as Illustrator. I don't know what your company does but maybe it could consider switching some people over. Losing customers is the only thing they'll pay attention to.
28,000++ views of this thread, way to "not" pay attention to your customers Adobe, I guess add this to the enormous list of basic things Illustrator lacks.
Anyway, you could probably set up an AppleScript (mac) or Visual Basic (windows) to run in the background and do an autosave of sorts.
But how do you expect it to work? Since Saving in AI involves a complete rewrite of the file as it exists at the moment of Save, it will have to suspend your working on the file until it is done. Is this acceptable to you. If it is, then just hit Save on a regular basis.
But how do you expect it to work? Since Saving in AI involves a complete rewrite of the file as it exists at the moment of Save, it will have to suspend your working on the file until it is done. Is this acceptable to you. If it is, then just hit Save on a regular basis.
Well, presumably the need for any autosave feature is based upon a users inability to remember to save their file on a regular basis, otherwise yes what is the point just hit save as you claim. So even based upon your statement of needing suspension and user interaction it would still fill this void (of human error) and allow the user to chose to save or forgo saving until the next timed prompt and chose to do so under a common repeated interval, or stop the feature all together. I guess it could maybe even be handled in JS as well right within Illustrator from this regard. Regardless to me it all comes back to the ability or rather inability to remember to save ones work. Over the course of ones career in using any software I am sure this has at times been an issue and work has been lost under whatever circumstances even for those with the best of intentions. Do you know preemptively when your file or software might crash, if not then what's wrong with having a reminder and process for saving when you're working?
Astute Graphics has recently released a free plug-in that will either auto-save or remind you to save periodically. (disclaimer: I don't work for Astute Graphics)
Works with CS5 to CC. Configuration also includes options to wait for a period of inactivity, and save a backup copy.
You need to provide your email address to get the free licence key, upon which you are also subscribed to their newsletter, but you can unsubscribe after the first newsletter arrives.
Well my power just went out and I lost 4 hours worth of Illustrator work. The good news is that all 4 of the other programs not made by Adobe recovered like a champ.
No. That may be how it's been in Adobe products for ages, but the rest of the world has autosave.
It's not an ability of 64 bit or a limitation of 32 bit. The way Illustrator saves files is not an issue. These excuses are balderdash.
Autosave started in the early 2000's when everything was 32 bit and it's extremely rare for a program to just save changes. Nearly all files are completely overwritten during the save process. This is quite simply just a feature that hasn't been implemented by Adobe.
To implement autosave, a programmer would save the the document you are working on into a temp folder after so many minutes or after so many actions. If the program shuts down normally it deletes the temp file. Then when the program starts up, if there are any temp files, it opens them automatically. It's not rocket science, but preaching save early, save often is kinda silly.
I understand the need for an autosave feature and it would be a nice feature to have. Seriously though why would you work 4 hours knowing there is no autosave and not save your work at any point.
Dear Ben-odo-1977, I am from the year 2014. In 2014, there are two things we have - a black president and autosave. It's a very progressive and a cool time to be alive.
After Illustrator crashed and I learned that there was no autosave file to recover from, I immediately yelled "Great Scott!" assuming that I had traveled back in time.
It is reasonable for a user to think that there was an autosave. Besides that it is 2014, other Adobe products like the main two I use, Photoshop and Premiere, have this feature.
Illustrator is a mature product. There is simply no excuse for lacking autosave nor is there a reason to 'blame the user' for this type or product failure.
I can only imagine that the guys at Adobe have a very lengthy and technical reason why there isn't an autosave feature. I guess you've learned the hard way, being a new user and not realising that there isn't such a feature.
At least you'll know to save regular in the future.
Weird issue couple of my users are having is when they open Illustrator files, once in a blue moon it would save all by itself and with no warning or dialog box, which screws things up even if no changes were made, the link would be modified.
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