How to stop Mac from auto-saving versions of large file?

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How to stop Mac from auto-saving versions of large file?

I have one specific Keynote file, 3.8 GB large, that I update almost every day. (Tons of photos for design inspiration. I like having them all in 1 place to mix & match)

Every time I open it up, add/change something, close it, I lose 3.8 GB of space on my HD because it automatically saves a "version"! (You know, when you want to File > Revert To >") Yesterday I had 130 GB worth of old versions of this file, and I was able to delete all of them at once, thankfully. Which freed up a massive amount of space. But I don't want to keep doing this all the time. Losing 3.8 GB & counting, each time, has been confirmed by checking About My Mac > Storage, and witnessing the loss in space after checking a 2nd time after I close the Keynote file.

Is there any way I can turn off this auto-saving feature JUST for a specific file? Or JUST for Keynote? Or do I really have to do it system-wide?

Thanks in advance!

OS X Yosemite (10.10)

Posted on Jul 29, 2015 9:55 AM

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Answer 1

Jul 29, 2015 1:09 PM in response to appleaskjm

Is there any way I can turn off this auto-saving feature JUST for a specific file? Or JUST for Keynote? Or do I really have to do it system-wide?

Just to be clear, auto saving is different to Revert to Version.

Auto saving is when a file is closed the changes will be saved without having to use the save command.

Revert to Version allows separate versions of a file to be retrieved.

Auto saving can be turned off in system preferences, Revert to Version can not be turned off.

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Answer 2

Aug 3, 2015 6:34 PM in response to Gary Scotland

the specific terminology may or may not have been wrong, but the context of the original statement was not wrong. the poster understood that the storage was being used by the automatic saving of versions.

i for one think apple is missing the mark on this technology. i have oodles of keynotes that are being created and subsequently changed throughout a development process to use the keynotes in an ibook. over the course of two ibooks of such, i lost perhaps 300 to 400 GB before i realized that i was almost literally down to my last byte of free data.

yes, i like to have a version i can revert to, but i don't need 18 months of perhaps over 100 to 200 of them on individual keynotes. this is a good idea run amok. i reached out to apple several times to find out what was eating my space up but all i got back was that they did not know and i should reformat my hard drive. this is certainly not user friendly. and i think that there are situations were it is impossible to reclaim the space without a reformat. i have to believe that someone understand this at apple, so i am at a loss to figure out why it is not being corrected.

the pain of this accumulation which is not understood by apple support when you call, cannot be easily fixed sometimes is worse than the original issue. give me a choice to stop accumulating these version and i'll be at the front of the line turning it off. at the least, allow global/local app setting that limits the number of these versions for a particular document on an oldest gets dropped off when a new one gets added.

perhaps i will call keynote support next business day.

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