The IT Department has a great team that can resurrect accidentally deleted files or find where a file 'magically' disappeared to. It is, however, impossible to recreate unsaved data. Here are some tips that could help you avoid the frustrations of losing your unsaved work.
Save your files before you walk away from your computer
A simple, yet effective, habit that is often overlooked. Pressing 'Ctrl + S' will quickly save the current document that you are working on. Doing this before you step away from you desk will ensure that any work you added to a document will be saved in the event of an unplanned outage.
Note: Saving your files to your X: drive, Departmental Shared Drive, or OneDrive will provide you with additional document safety.
Setup AutoRecover for your Microsoft Office Desktop Applications
Microsoft Office allows for Automatic Recovery of open documents.
To enable or edit this feature, find the Options button (either under the Help or File tab) and choose Save from the left pane. There are two settings that can be set:
- Save AutoRecover information every x minutes
- Keep the last autosaved version if I close without saving
Checking both boxes will help to ensure that you won't have any issues finding unsaved documents.
Note: The AutoRecover files are only stored for four days after creation.
Use Office 365 in a browser
Office 365 has a wonderful feature that automatically saves files to OneDrive while you work on them. Files saved in OneDrive can be worked on from Office365 for the web from any location. If you prefer using one of the installed apps, you can click the 'Open in Desktop App' in the toolbar.
To learn more about using Office 365, check out Microsoft's short video tutorials here.