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Where does Lion save version of your document?

I have three questions about versions in Lion.



1) Where does Lion save the versions?


2) If I save a copy of my document on a second external harddrive or thumb drive will a copy of the version be saved there too?


3) Can i delete parts or all of the versions of my document?

Posted on Aug 3, 2011 9:01 PM

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21 replies

Aug 12, 2018 1:02 AM in response to etresoft

I found this out the hard way (is there any other way?)


I 'assumed' versions would work like 'autosave' under Windows (at least the last time I used Windows, several OS's ago) and that even before I titled a document it would be saving the 'untitled' document. Ahem... nope.


I was working on a project and had to quit Pages and I thought "How cool, I can just close the app and when I reopen it my article will still be there. That did not happen.


Lesson learned but after waiting years for a simple autosave this seemed like an oversite. Okay, it was user error, but still it hurt like a son-of-a-bike!


And I'm really vigilant about backing up too. I have Time Machine going, I back up almost daily to a thumb drive, I have a symbolic link to my documents folder in DropBox, but none of that saved me at the time. Time machine would have I suppose but it hadn't run since I started writing the article.


For a lot of stuff I use a 1940's Remington Model 5 typewriter, and what's amazing is that when I'm done there is magically a pile of paper beside me with everything already printed out in hard copy. Ikr?

Aug 12, 2018 1:02 AM in response to Barney-15E

I'll say two things a) versions doesn't start backing anything up until it's named, so don't wait until you're quitting to make that 1st. save. Once something has a title it seems flawless.

b) You are absolutely correct sir, there should have been a dialog box, but there tweren't. I know, that doesn't seem possible. It's a head scratcher.


Thanks for your feedback. :-)

Aug 12, 2018 1:02 AM in response to etresoft

etresoft:


I tested this and you are correct, an untitled doc does open back up where I left off. But on that one occasion it certainly did not. I can't reproduce the problem but it did happen.


I will not count on it working in the future, I will aslways save a properly titled ersion now every time I open Pages.

Aug 4, 2011 5:40 AM in response to Kevin41269

Kevin41269 wrote:


1) Where does Lion save the versions?

In a hidden folder named .DocumentRevisions-V100 in the root directory of your hard drive.


2) If I save a copy of my document on a second external harddrive or thumb drive will a copy of the version be saved there too?

It depends on the format of the external drive. An external HFS+ drive will have its own .DocumentRevisions-V100 directory. Other types of volumes such as thumb drives or network drives do not fully support versions. While you are editing a versioned file on such a volume, you will have temporary versions stored in the .DocumentRevisions-V100 folder of your startup drive. As soon as you close the file (on a non-HFS+ volume), all of those temporary versions will be deleted and only the last version will be recorded. You have to manually close the file for this. If you just quit the application, that doesn't close the file. You can run the application again and you will still have those temporary versions.


3) Can i delete parts or all of the versions of my document?


No.

Aug 4, 2011 6:53 PM in response to Kevin41269

iKokie is wrong, etresoft is correct.


BTW, you can delete versions of your docs. Click alongside the doc's name on the right side and a discover triangle appears (another of those nasty, but counterintuitve things Apple's included with Lion), and select Reveal Versions or some such thing. Then, select a version and OPTION-click it's title, and you should get a Delete option.

Aug 4, 2011 6:48 PM in response to Kevin41269

Kevin, as far as I know, you cannot delete versions created by auto-save. This is why I went back to Snow Leopard. I can't have a system on my desk that holds unwanted copies of confidential documents within an application. Some of the saved files in Pages are docs I never intended or desired to save. It just happens to you every 5 minutes, so you have to really type fast...

Aug 4, 2011 7:18 PM in response to etresoft

I'm not sure that's entirely right. Lion saves a new version of the document whenever you close a document, are idle for a little while (less than 30 seconds), have made significant changes, or explicitly save it. Apple strongly encourages developers to make saving an asynchronous operation, so that the user is not held up by the save process. I have been "held up" by the save process repeatedly.

Aug 6, 2011 6:17 AM in response to Matt Schultz

Matt Schultz wrote:


I'm not sure that's entirely right.


Me neither.


Lion saves a new version of the document whenever you close a document, are idle for a little while (less than 30 seconds), have made significant changes, or explicitly save it.


In my tests:

  • You definitely get a new version upon close. Sometimes two of them. I'm going to file a bug report on that.
  • I do not see any new versions after any period of idleness.
  • I haven't tested it enough to see if significant changes cause a new version. I don't work enough in TextEdit to even try that. I just bought Pages to do some ePub work, so I might know more later.
  • An explicit save does create a new version.


Apple strongly encourages developers to make saving an asynchronous operation, so that the user is not held up by the save process. I have been "held up" by the save process repeatedly.


I think that is part of the problem. Apple is marketing Versions and Autosave together and people are confusing the two. They do work together, but they aren't the same.

Aug 14, 2011 3:35 PM in response to soehn

The Apple KB seems to say an autosave is just a version, which appears to have happened in my case.


And the hidden folder on your root drive holds, I believe, essentially a changelog of file diffs, not file "versions" in the sense of separate files. It resides in a sqlite database. So it's not a matter of opening it somehow and copying one of the revisions, although theoretically someone with administrative privileges could, I suppose, dig out data you've typed looking for a changed credit card number or what not. So I guess the earlier post about security is well-taken: even if you were saving to a vault that you subsequently encrypted and closed that password you wrote about is unencrypted and laying around in a database on your root directory. Hmmm.


It seems it would be nice to be able to turn Autosave off. And I wonder if even if it were off, would the system store diffs in the database for a time? What you'd want is for the software you're using not to even access it.


And BTW, when I change a textedit file, but do not save, the changes still show in a QuickLook view of that file in the Finder. It still has the "Edited" notation in the title bar. Anyone else experience that?

Where does Lion save version of your document?

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