Autosave should be pretty simple to implement, and you could use one of the major frameworks like jquery or mootools. All you need to do is use window.setTimeout once your user edits something that should be autosaved, and have that timeout call the javascript frameworks standard AJAX stuff.
Do not use AutoRecover as a substitute for regularly saving your work by clicking Save.
Note: The Developer does not autosave package documents.
An action is required to resolve any recovery situation. These situations, actions and the resulting behaviors are described below:
Document was previously saved and an autorecover copy exists that the author wants to save.
Save: The autorecover copy becomes the current version and the older autosave version is discarded.
Document was never saved but the author wants to save the autosave copy.
Save: The author is prompted to provide a document name and save the document. The saved document becomes the latest version and the autosave is cleared. If the Developer unexpectedly terminates before an autosave was created, the document is lost because there is no copy to revert back to.
Author chooses to save an autosave copy by another name.
Save As: A copy of the autosave document is saved as the user supplied name and the autosave copy is discarded. Since it is a copy of the original, documents linked to the newly saved document (for example, the Section linked to the Topic), must be linked again.
Author chooses to discard an autosave document
Close: If the document is closed without being saved, it reverts back to the last explicitly saved version and the autosave is cleared.
Multi-user Considerations
When the author chooses to save an autorecover document, the Developer checks out the document if necessary and replaces that version with the autorecover version. The author can then check in the new version.
- I looked in the folder /Library/Autosave Information and found an unsaved, untitlted Numbers document and a com.apple.iwork.numbers.plist file. The unsaved Numbers document was the one that I had been attempting to duplicate (see my original comment above). Once I deleted both of these files from Autosave Information, then Numbers started.
- Disable auto-save for the organization. If you determine that auto-save will cause problems with any extensions you are using, you can disable it for your organization. There is no setting to disable auto-save for individual entities or forms. Go to Settings Administration. Choose System Settings. For the Enable auto-save for all forms option.
Mac storage space is important to us. And it should be important to you too. The performance of our Macs is tied to our available storage space. A Mac with a full hard disk is going to be very slow and make it harder for apps and the OS to run smoothly.
Today we want to discuss the silent storage killers: the Pages, Notes, and Keynote apps.
It's easy to identify big video files and other obvious storage space hogs. But what about apps that create small temporary and cache files? These files are tiny on their own but if they are constantly generated by the app and the user (when saving files) then over time these grains of sand can become a full-scale beach.
Why documents use more space than you think and what to do
If you are a regular user of Pages, Notes, or Keynote, then you potentially have thousands of old documents, old versions of these old documents, and cache files related to these old documents. If your head is spinning, we don’t blame you. But fear not because we're going to show you how to clear out the junk made by these apps and reclaim a nice chunk of your Mac storage space.
How to clear document version history and auto-save cache manually
When working on a document you can always roll back to a previous version with the Version History screen. But if you don’t want or need to roll back on certain documents, it would be a good idea to remove document versions and free up some space.
We’re going to show you have to accomplish that and also clear the cache for Pages, Keynote, and Notes. All you need is Finder and a bit of bravery. Before using these manual solutions, please make sure that your current documents are saved, and you don't need old (unsaved) versions of your documents.
Ready? Let's go!
To manually remove versions and cache from Pages:
- Open Finder.
- Click on the Go menu.
- Select Go To Folder.
- Type in /Users/yourusername/Library/Containers/com.apple.iWork.Pages/Data/Library/Caches
- To be safe backup the Caches folder to an external location
- Then you can move the original Caches folder to the Trash and then empty your Trash
The steps for Notes and Keynote are the same, just using a different file path.
Notes - /Users/Username/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/Data/Library/Caches
Keynote - /Users//Library/Containers/com.apple.iWork.Keynote/Data/Library/Caches
Delete those folders, and your Mac should be a lot cleaner, with a significant amount of freed up space for personal file storage or a better performing system.
The problem with the manual approach is the potential for deleting the wrong thing as well as the black and white nature of the manual removal. You either have all your app cache, or you have none of it. Wouldn’t it be better if there was a way to remove the bulk of old document versions but keep a select few in case you ever need to go back to a previous version?
Well, there is a way, and that’s what we’re going to cover next.
How to take easily remove document versions
Instead of completely removing the file history of your Notes, Pages, and Keynote documents, why not get a clear overview of all your document history and then make your own decision? This way you can keep some basic version history while removing the majority of the version files that you’ll never need.
You free up a lot of storage space on your Mac while still having backup versions if you ever need them. It's the best of both worlds.
Do it with a dedicated app
This can’t be done manually but can be achieved with the help of CleanMyMac. This is a Mac decluttering app that covers this problem. It will give you an overview of your version history for Pages, Notes, and Keynote. CleanMyMac will present early versions of backup files from every four-hour block of time working on the file.
So if you were working on a Keynote presentation for 12 hours total, you might have hundreds of versions auto-saved by the app. CleanMyMac will keep the last version from each four-hour block for a total of three versions. Let’s see how it works.
To review and clean document versions follow these steps:
- Get a copy of CleanMyMac X app — it's free version is available for download here
- Click on the System Junk module.
- Click on Scan.
- Click on Review Details.
- Find and click on the Document Versions folder.
Now you can select either Pages/Notes/Keynote. Expand the document file of your choosing and select the versions you want to remove. If you click the Clean button at the bottom the temporary version will be deleted.
Note: This way CleanMyMac removes only the intermediary versions, keeping the first and the last document versions intact.
If you don't want to review your documents and you just want CleanMyMac to remove 99.9% of version history and cache junk immediately, it can be done in just two clicks:
Library Autosave Information Clearwater
- Launch CleanMyMac X
- Click on System Junk module
- Click Clean
These methods don?t just work for document apps like Pages, Notes, and Keynote. They work for many other macOS apps that store caches, including 'cache eaters' like Chrome and Safari.
Library Autosave Information Clearinghouse
The results of cache and document version cleaning
We ran CleanMyMac X on a typical Mac system that uses Pages, Notes, and Keynote on a regular basis. As you can see below, the removal of the cache and version history freed up 5 GB of space.
Did you ever imagine that document apps could be wasting so much space?
Try these cleaning methods yourself and see how much hard disk space you can reclaim from the silent storage killers.
In doing so you will become the killer of junk!