Home Forums Mac Software Mac Applications Auto-save grief in Pages

This is strange. I updated to Pages 5.6.1 a few months ago, and as far as I can remember, whenever I would close a document after making changes, I would get the usual "Do you want to save your changes" dialog. Now, I've noticed that Pages is saving my document whenever I close it without asking me. I thought maybe there is some preference option to autosave, but I can't find any. So, maybe I just have a bad memory and I'm confusing the new version of Pages with the old one. But either way, having worked with software for several decades where it always asks if you want to save, I find this to be yet another one of Apple's bad moves in making software less useable by removing options.

This created a problem for me recently. I opened a document that I'd been working on, deleted several sections and started to rewrite them. In the end, I decided that I didn't want to save the changes, and simply closed the document, expecting to get the save dialog, to which I would reply with "Don't Save". Nothing came up, and when I reopened the document, all the unwanted changes had been saved. So, I had to go to a backup in order to fix the mess.

The weird thing is that there doesn't appear to be any simple way in Pages to revert to the original document, if you don't want to save your changes. Some software has a Revert item in the file menu, but not Pages.

I'm running Pages 5.6 in OS X 10.10.5, and my File menu has a Revert To item with a submenu containing a single Browse All Versions… item, which when selected invokes a Time Machine-like interface containing the autosaved iterations.

If you prefer (as I do) to be prompted to keep or discard changes when closing documents, go to System Preferences -> General and tick the Ask to keep changes when closing documents checkbox.

Hmm, yeah. Somehow I missed that. I'll blame it on my cold medications. Brain not working too well at the moment.



Thanks. I missed that one. I suspect I had this ticked on my old Macbook Pro but somehow it got unticked on my new computer. That would explain everything.

Bob,

If it helps, you are not alone re overlooking that Preference setting. As for moi, I do not blame my meds, but rather, 'tis my wife who changes things in the night...

Just so she sticks to changing OS X rather than your meds!

I have Pages 3.0.3 (OS 10.8.5) and the function is listed but greyed out. I ran a few tests and couldn't get the software to recognize there were other saved versions.

Pages has a Preference called "Backup previous version when saving" but checking that box didn't help.

I wonder why the function would be listed if it wasn't actually slated to work until a later version.

I suspect that it may not recognize versions that you saved yourself. Pages is probably keeping its own backups after you select the option. You may have to do multiple open-edit-close operations to generate some backups.

Thanks. I'll keep an eye out and see what happens with normal open/edit/close actions. When I said checking the "Backup previous version when saving" didn't help, I only meant it didn't allow me to seek a backup from "Revert to Saved" under File.

It did make backups when I saved after changes, but they were all separate documents in the saved folder - not quite Time Machine-like behaviour. I have a habit of saving constantly, so the saved folder could get a bit bulky.

Nope, it does not work that way. I save as I go and also use Pages' autosave. If you choose "Revert to…" from the File menu, you see 'em all.

And I'm not sure what Saved folder you're looking at, but the Revert to… shows me a Time Machine-like scenario. The current page(s) show up on the left of the screen and the stacked versions a la TM show up on the right.

Does this Apple Stackexchange article answer your question?