This is about the most recent version of LibreOffice on Windows 10. I can’t speak for other versions.

My daughter worked hard on her social studies essay. I type things in for her because she’s a really bad typist, but she tells me what to write… but I didn’t remember to manually save her social studies essay yesterday, and for some reason the ThinkPad rebooted, LibreOffice crashed and we lost the whole thing… because autosave was not automatically on when I installed it.

No, recovery didn’t work. We just got a blank file.

I rewrote it for her based on the information we had and what I remembered and tried to make it sound like what a 13-year-old would write because it was basically my fault and she did do the work. I did have her sit with me as I wrote it in case she didn’t like something I wrote, but it was sort of cheating. I’m okay with that cheating since I know she worked hard on it.

First, though, I went into the settings and turned on autosave.

I like LibreOffice, but why the hell is that not on automatically? Honestly, I don’t really understand why someone wouldn’t want their documents autosaved, but I’m pretty sure most people would want that.

This isn’t fucking 1993. I shouldn’t have to remember to save a document anymore and it shouldn’t be lost forever because of it.

Like I said, I like LibreOffice. I don’t really want to trust documents to Microsoft or Google. But this was really annoying.

    • Nighed@sffa.communityEnglish
      101·
      10 months ago

      I dislike autosaves in word processors/spreadsheets etc and turn them off whenever I can. I prefer to have that control, I have had issues where I have deleted things to rewrite/update them, decide against it and close the app only to find it’s overwritten what I had done…

      • biscuitswalrus@aussie.zoneEnglish
        7·
        10 months ago

        Have you tried using file versioning, or using review (track changes) functions to propose changes so you can choose to accept edits or decide against them? It’s like there are specific features for this scenario that allow you to save, have backups and have that control.

        • Nighed@sffa.communityEnglish
          5·
          10 months ago

          yeh, those are solutions, I was just explaining how its not automatically better.

          Latex documents in git are the best option technically, but good luck getting the average person (or me!) to do that.

      • GreyBeard@lemmy.oneEnglish
        6·
        10 months ago

        I don’t mind auto saving in places that keep versioning. But by default for LibreOffice does sound as dangerous as not having it.

        • biscuitswalrus@aussie.zoneEnglish
          31·
          10 months ago

          Not really, you can leave auto save on, and use the inbuilt track changes function. Best of both worlds.