I just finished editing a previously saved 5 page rough draft and i was trying to add a header before i saved my changes and then the Pages application shut down. Now after 3 hours of editing, all of my changes are now deleted. Is there any way to recover an unsaved document? Is there like a temporary storage file or autosave file I can access? My paper is due tomorrow so any responses would be greatly appreciated.
Hi Kelly,
"Maybe", but I can't tell you how.
Either way, take this incident as a learning experience—Make naming and saving the document your FIRST step after creating it. Once you've done that, the Mac updates the file at 10-12 second intervals if changes have been made.
Regards,
Barry
(Who learned this lesson in the days before auto save of updates was a thing, adnd needed to add 'If you're stepping away from the keyboard, press command-S before leaving).
Before I saved a document on notepad it got deleted. How can I get it back?
Barry,
I am about to have some fresh dark roast coffee, and I recommend the same — as you just responded to the OP of a 2013 post. Not that I haven't done this before ... 😉
No
You haven't said what version of Pages on what version of OSX but since OSX 10.7 they all require you to save the first time to create the named file that all subsequent versions will be saved to.
https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/29454/foreversave-lite
Will prompt you to save the first time and then save at set intervals.
Apple as usual has created a novel auto-saving and versioning system that falls at the first hurdle.
It should save a temporary file in Documents with a unique System tag, or the first line of the document, if you haven't saved within 5 minutes of opening it.
Then if you chose to not Save, move that copy to the Trash.
Finally to give you a 3rd chance to recover, let you reopen the unsaved document from the Recent menu, returning the temporary file from the Trash.
This would cover the usual human behavioral problems. People tend to get into their work and forget to do the mundane things like Save until too late. It is easy to hit Don't Save when that pops up either by misclicking, or out of some long standing habit. Only thinking about it after the event.
Peter
Thank you! I will definitely use this for the future!
I will give Apple feedback along with the modified Save procedure I outlined:
Menu > Pages > Provide Pages Feedback
This of course should be a System feature not just a Pages feature, but it is one point at which they can be informed.
I suggest you do the same.
Peter
Peter,
I am not sure if you are aware that the auto save system does save that temporary file, although in the Autosave Information folder in the user's Library. And since that unsaved window is normally restored on relaunch, it shouldn't be necessary to find that folder very often. While the file gets a generic filename (something like "Unsaved Pages Document"), it can be Quick Looked if you do have to identify it.
They don't keep the file around, if you select "Don't Save," but I certainly do not want to have to delete a file three times, when I never wanted it to be written to disk in the first place.
Jeff
If it gets rid of the temporary file when you either deliberately or accidentally hit Don't Save or Delete File then that is of no practical use.
Peter
Peter,
I'm sorry, but I don't think that an autosave that saves a document until you specifically tell it not to is "of no practical use."
On the other hand, I think autosave is, in general, a bad idea because it interferes with my control of the document, and I think Apple should have provided a means for turning it off.
Jeff
Can you recover unsaved documents after the application shuts down
