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General Software Discussion / Your Computer Tip of the Day: Use "Save As" and Version your Documents
« Last post by mouser on November 03, 2006, 06:26 AM »Most people have learned the lesson to save their work frequently.
Writing a document in MS Word or Open Office, you know you should hit Ctrl+S to save your work every 5 or 10 minutes don't you - you don't want a computer crash to kill your last great burst of inspiration.
Butting here's some advice that less people follow:
Every once in a while save your file using "Save As" and give it a versioned name.
For example: Thesis_34.txt
or MyNovel_Oct22_2006.doc
If you don't like the idea of your file changing names, then you can do it from windows explorer and just copy the document to some extra folder and rename it. Or if you use a backup program that will auto-version your files what could work too.
Why bother with versioning multiple backups of your files?
Occasionally files get corrupted, or you realize a week later you've somehow deleted 10 of your best pages. You don't want to find yourself in the position of only have the one latest version of your document and no way to get back at what you had yesterday. Never rely on the integrity of a single version of your important stuff.
So my advice is, disk space is cheap enough that any time you are righting some document, use Save As and use versioning.
Writing a document in MS Word or Open Office, you know you should hit Ctrl+S to save your work every 5 or 10 minutes don't you - you don't want a computer crash to kill your last great burst of inspiration.
Butting here's some advice that less people follow:
Every once in a while save your file using "Save As" and give it a versioned name.
For example: Thesis_34.txt
or MyNovel_Oct22_2006.doc
If you don't like the idea of your file changing names, then you can do it from windows explorer and just copy the document to some extra folder and rename it. Or if you use a backup program that will auto-version your files what could work too.
Why bother with versioning multiple backups of your files?
Occasionally files get corrupted, or you realize a week later you've somehow deleted 10 of your best pages. You don't want to find yourself in the position of only have the one latest version of your document and no way to get back at what you had yesterday. Never rely on the integrity of a single version of your important stuff.
So my advice is, disk space is cheap enough that any time you are righting some document, use Save As and use versioning.
