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Autosave Pages documents...

Is there a way—even third-party—to automatically save documents in Pages? Perhaps all changes all the time, like in Google's apps, or on a schedule, such as every 10 minutes. Pages does crash every once in a while, and I would like to avoid losing significant work.


Pages doesn't seem able to do this, and I see nothing in either Shortcuts or Automator that might autosave Pages documents. But surely others have this need as well. Any ideas?


Thanks!



Mac mini, macOS 13.2

Posted on Feb 28, 2023 8:58 PM

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5 replies

Mar 1, 2023 7:30 PM in response to picas

Thanks! You're right. it's not obvious, since Pages asks if you want to save when you close a document, so I tested it by making a change to a Pages document, then force-quitting Pages, hoping that would simulate an "unexpected quit." When I re-opened the document, the change had been saved. Whew! So I presume this is also the case with Time Machine backups? When making changes to a Pages document while Time Machine is backing up, TM is saving the changes up to that point?


Also explored "Revert to" and found that the changes were also properly reflected in the different versions. Good to know!


Again, thanks!

Mar 1, 2023 12:42 AM in response to Steve Porritt

Pages may not autosave to some third-party cloud solutions or drives formatted with a Microsoft NTFS filesystem of which Apple has by default, read-only capability. The autosave feature was designed to work with Apple's iCloud and the local Mac filesystem, though I know for a fact that it will work on a mounted share from my Synology NAS.

Feb 28, 2023 10:18 PM in response to Steve Porritt

Yes: “The first time you save a document, you name it and select where to save it — on your desktop or in a folder, for example. Thereafter, Pages automatically saves your document as you work. You can rename a document at any time or create a duplicate of it with a different name.” – Save and name a document in Pages on Mac – Apple Support (AU)


Mar 1, 2023 7:40 PM in response to VikingOSX

Not a problem for me, as I avoid as much as possible Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, and other non-iCloud storage. In fact, this thread came about because I am sometimes forced to work in Google Docs and MS Word (the horror, the horror), and both have autosave to their respective clouds. Got me wondering if Pages had something similar. Didn't see anything, so... .


Thanks for the heads-up about saving in a third-party cloud!

Mar 2, 2023 4:24 AM in response to Steve Porritt

Pages, though having an entirely different internal document content, is like MS Word .docx, a renamed zip container. Google Docs are designed by Google to handle Microsoft documents correctly, but after all these years, it still treats Pages documents as a zip container. Thus, if you attempt to double-click a Pages document saved on Google Drive, Google will automatically attempt to unzip it, and that destroys the document. Exactly what MS Windows does too…


Yes, the horror…

Autosave Pages documents...

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