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.
This is user error. Everyone knows to save.
/s
Not really, autosave has been a thing for so many years at this point
So has automatic braking in cars.
Many people still drive older cars due to costs and environmental factors, meanwhile there’s no real reason to use an old version of a word processing software unless you really want to due to nostalgic reasons. And automatic braking doesn’t even exist on every new car…
I agree and disagree at the same time.
I agree, people should learn how to use technology.
I disagree, technology should be easy to use.
I love that there are still kids learning this hard lesson in the year 2024.
I’ll be the devil’s advocate. A little.
LibreOffice being FOSS probably means developers are mostly using it together with other FOSS. This brings some benefits, like a journaled filesystem, that sort of make the autosave useless. That recovery process that failed for you? It wouldn’t have on something like btrfs or ext4 and, consequently, you wouldn’t have been in a position where you’re typing up this post.
Having said that, on bs OSes like windows autosave probably should be the default.
I hate Windows so much. Her school requires it for a small handful of reasons and I don’t really want to fuck with getting those particular occasional use pieces of software to work in Linux, so we’re sticking with Win 10 for now. I hear 11 is worse.
I support Office365 in an education environment and you wouldn’t believe the number of documents lost to autosave. Autosave and document recovery are definitely nice and useful to have, but they’re not infallible. Shit happens and when it does, it’s when you’re finishing up your midterm the night before it’s due.
You need to save, and save often. And if the project you’re working on is “super important it’s 50% of my grade” make backups. Even just saving a copy to a flash drive is better than nothing.
I might end up throwing in the towel and going with that or Google Docs, but, and I know these are just a child’s school essays, I hate giving Microsoft and Google more data just on principle because who the hell knows what they’re doing with all that data.
Libreoffice will likely still work fine for you, especially now that you’ve got autosave turned on. Heck, I have faculty that refuse to use anything other than LibreOffice, so I have it installed in our computer labs. As long as you’re saving and backing up reasonably often, you should be good to go. Though your school likely has a cloud suite that you could use too. Office365 and Google Workspaces are by far the most popular. It would be integrated with your daughter’s student email which I can’t imagine a modern school not having. If you’re not sure, contact the school and they’d be able to help you.
I’m sorry your kid lost her paper! It’s always a bummer to take a call and it’s a kid crying because their paper went up in smoke. If you haven’t already, contact the teacher and let them know what happened. IME most teachers are reasonable and as long as “office ate my homework” isn’t your go-to excuse, they’ll give you an extension.
I appreciate it, thanks. It’s all been sorted out now, so we can just move on and we’ve both learned a lesson.
In addition to the other comment, if your school has a paid O365 or Google account it’s far less likely that they’re vacuuming up your data because you’re now an enterprise account that they actually care about keeping, unlike a personal account. Even more so if it’s an account for a child, which usually requires stricter privacy controls.
Honestly though, as much much as I despise Microsoft and Google, I would never recommend anything else to my parents / family because I know they just don’t care as much as I do, and they’re not willing to learn or change anything. It doesn’t sound like you’re quite that way, but perhaps still less comfortable with something that’s not 100% rock solid. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to go with some of these paid services if it means you’re going to be happier.
The school, unfortunately, does not pay for such things. But I do understand what you’re saying. The thing is I’m trying to be more responsible about that sort of thing after a long time of not being very responsible about it and when this sort of thing happens, it can be a mildly infuriating experience because it doesn’t do what I would expect the commercial alternative to do, although most of the time it is not on this level because data isn’t lost.
Maybe that is unreasonable of me, but it still makes me feel that way.
No I definitely get it… I’ve definitely been more than mildly infuriated when my FOSS replacement doesn’t work as well. All a journey, best of luck to you!
Thanks, you too!
What does MS say when you report these to them? Is it always the same bug still unfixed or separate issues? Nothing is infallible with software, but note that in ops case autosave was disabled so no mystery “autosave lost my document”, it was just disabled.
And ffs autosave is just a timer that saves the document every x minutes the same way a user would do if they pressed save. I do believe you get many issues reported to you, but I doubt Microsoft autosave is so buggy to cause an unbelievable amount of data loss in a single institution (and I love to shit on MS).
A well-implemented autosave should save every time anything changes in the document.
This is why I rather use something like Google docs, even though I’m not a fan of Google, it saves automatically and has a version history I can revert to.
This is clearly a layer-8-problem.
My daughter lost…
We lost everything…
I forgot to save…
I can’t recommend OnlyOffice enough. I just did a test repeatedly killing the application and the document is recovered with the default settings.
I’ll check it out. Thanks!
Thank you for posting this. I hadn’t run into this problem, and now I won’t.
Yeah, foss softwares are full of these ‘design flaws’ for some reason. Take for exemple the ‘single click to open files’ that was the default on KDE for so long despite everyone reverting it back to double click.
despite everyone reverting it back to double click
Says who? I’m still using single click and won’t go back. This is a very different choice than having autosave on by default.
it is and it isn’t
they’re both bad UX, which FOSS is generally pretty bad because there’s not as much overlap between people who who are really into FOSS and people who are really into UX
linux-centric communities also tend to be plagued by elitism, which i expect stifles a lot of this kind of thing before proper conversations can take root
it is and it isn’t
It is. Single/double click behavior is a matter of preference. Autosave on is a measure to mitigate risk. Very different choices.
Adding context that the clicking behavior on executables is defined by another setting on Dolphin.
Single/double click behavior is a matter of preference.
And defaulting to the preference that most people prefer or are used to is a matter of UX.
Which is why I say they’re both UX decisions.
Which is why I say they’re both UX decisions.
yet very different - binning them into the same category is not helpful. Single click as default is ok, autosave off as default is probably not.
Auto save is extremely dangerous and should be off by default. Computers should never do things, especially with important documents, without the user telling them to. If the user wants to save the file, they’ll tell the computer to save the file. If they don’t tell the computer to save the file, they clearly don’t want the file saved (if they do want it saved and expect the computer to do it for them without being told to, they shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a computer, sharp objects, or open flames, as they clearly could be a danger to themselves and others).
Computers should never do things, especially with important documents, without the user telling them to
L take. Computers have always done thousands of things in the background. Autosave does not mean “overwrite the original file”.
yet very different
which is why my first words to you were “it is and it isn’t”
binning them into the same category is not helpful
both are caused by people in the foss space not paying enough attention to ux
increased attention to ux could solve both
personally i think categorising all work solely through the lens of severity is unhelpful
risk mitigation definitely comes before preference, whether you call them both UX or not
And single drastically increases the risk of running some sketchy executable just because you selected it.
It doesn’t, that’s another setting. By default Dolphin asks confirmation before running anything with mouse clicks. Also you can double click just as impulsively as single clicking, so it wouldn’t even be a good safeguard.
Well then, you also have large documents or incriminating photos you may not intend to open.
Us older folks automatically hit save every few minutes. But not saving days worth of work is asking for trouble.
I’m feeling old right now, thx
I even impulsively hit Ctrl+S when writing comments on Lemmy once in a while
I sometimes ctrl+S on my web browser.
me too, but it’s beacuse that’s the emacs keybinding for incremental search
So did you want this as an .htm archive or what)
You have to hit Ctrl+S 3 or 4 times in a row, just in case too.
This is how I play Pokemon yellow. Save game? Better save again just in case.
I am an older folk. I grew up with an Apple II. I just have gotten used to autosave being on automatically in pretty much every word processor I’ve used since probably the mid-1990s. I just can’t imagine why they decided to not have it on when you install it.
the only time i ever lost a paper/document (at 13, for social studies), was on an apple IIc. then i rewrote it. i cried A LOT.
it has never happened since, and writing is a significant part of my job. i learned the hard way.
Never assume something works until you’ve verified it. And even then assume it’ll break some time
I mean, yes, but also it’s a fair assumption to make that autosave would either be on or the fact that it was off would be communicated.
A fair assumption maybe, but not a safe one.
What word processors? Even Microsoft office doesn’t have autosave on by default unless you’re working off of One Drive/Share Point online.
Why would you switch to different software and assume it works the same as another?
Yep, my thoughts exactly… my company doesn’t want us to use OneDrive because of some security fears, so none of our work has autosave. Just because it’s 2024 doesn’t mean everything has autosave. Even working in a browser doesn’t always have autosave, I use some online programs daily that you have to remember to Ctrl + S.
I think your memory might be failing on this, because we’re about the same age and autosave wasn’t really a common feature in the 90s. MacOS didn’t introduce autosave until OSX Lion in 2010, and Microsoft’s auto-recover (which was their only feature even close to autosave until office365) wasn’t introduced until the 2000s and didn’t work properly until 2007.
Fair. I could very well be misremembering. I don’t have the greatest memory.
It happens to me more and more these days as well.
I don’t have the greatest memory.
You should have hit Ctrl + S more throughout life.
If only it were that easy.
It does for me, but I’m autistic.
I can literally decide “I’m gonna remember this thing” and then push it into my brain in a way that I know it’ll be there forever.
Agreed. It’s standard practice now. At the very least LibreOffice should ask you on document creation if you want it on.
There’s no reason to create the extra work of the past unless you are specifically making a nostalgia product.
I just can’t imagine why they decided to not have it on when you install it.
Different generational audiences expect different UX about their software, as this topic has aptly shown.
I’m sure there’s a bunch of people who would be pissed off at the fact that they only want to control when a save happens (by default), and not the app.
Personally I would expect it to be on automatically (normal modern UX), but also after I’ve written big blocks of very important text I’d do a manual save, as I don’t know where in the interval cycle between automatic saves I would be at (when’s the next autosave happening). Best of both worlds, basically.
Finally, only because I’m talking to you right now, as far as you and your child goes, only you as their parent knows what’s best for them.
Take heart that if you’re trying, you’re already halfway there, as many parents don’t even bother.
And don’t take the negative downloading you’re getting on this topic as a criticism of your parenting skills, aholes on the Internet trying to keep the world exactly how they expect it to be from way back when, and are so hung up on responsibility to a fault, are not the best sources for knowledge on how well or poorly you’re doing as a parent.
I am an older folk. I grew up with an Apple II.
I as well. Still have fun memories of loading Choplifter into my Apple via a cassette tape recorder.
Thanks much.
Also, I’m going to have to go play Choplifter now!
And “save as” every few times (or every time if the document is important).
I lost a lot of work hours once because I was using a program that saved a backup copy every time you saved (so that you’d always be able to recover the previous version), and the damn thing crashed while saving, thus corrupting both the save file and the backup. Never. Again. Hard drive space is less expensive than my time and what’s left of my mental health.
I worked as a kitchen designer and for each customer’s meeting I’d made a new file with everything the same except the date in the filename. So worst case I’d lose a day’s work.
I’m barely an adult and I do this. I think it’s less your age, and more the type of programs you tend to use—ei. programs where you may not want things auto saved, for me game engine, but there’s plenty of examples.
“Us” don’t do anything, but we do.
I still do this regularly while using Google docs even though I don’t think it has any effect.
I’m 28, do that too. Though maybe that’s what you meant by older.
No, whippersnapper, that’s not what I meant ;)
Young folk who have lost hours of progress in robotics programming projects too… Once is enough to learn your lesson. The inevitable second time is traumatizing. By the third time, you hit Ctrl+s five times after every paragraph.
I don’t think OP’s kid is gonna learn the lesson here. Sounds like Dad was handling the typing for her, and then when things screw up he’s blaming others for it. Not a good environment for a kid to learn in.
That was my sense too. OP isn’t letting his kid learn the hard lessons for themselves.
Also what kind of an excuse is it to say she sucks at typing? With practice she will improve, so let her do her own homework
I was going to say, it was absolutely drilled into our heads to save after every paragraph.
My high school teacher would occasionally flip the breaker for the computers in the school computer lab just to give those of us with bad saving habits a hard reminder.Your teacher would probably get raked over the coals for traumatizing the kids if she did that now
Meh, only the Libreoffice kids
If only computers could automate repetitive tasks. Oh, well.
If only people understood the tradeoffs with automation
Auto save with Google Docs style snapshots has so little overhead I’d hardly consider it a trade-off. We have insane amounts of disk storage and extremely reliable non-volatile memory. The only reason against it that I can conceive of is confidential data you don’t ever want to exist outside of volatile memory.
All modern word processors use auto save and it kinda blows my mind libre does not do this.
They can. Just have to turn the autosave on. Better to manually save still just in case
I teach my students to do manual save every 5 minutes. Just hit ctl+s and it’s done. I basically save everytime I make a change in a project. I’ve learn the hard way while working on my thesis piece. Pretty much cost me 6 months of my life.
Did you edit your thesis for six months without saving?
I know people that used to rely on the document recovery in Word to save their documents. Every day they’d recover the document they’d want to work on.
😮
Holy mother. That’s like jumping in front of a train every evening and relying on the groundhog day to wake you up in your bed again in the morning.
Yeah it terrified me once I found out. Some people think of the strangest workflows. (relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1172/)
My thesis was versioned using SVN on my server and I had a remote backup at my parents. And stored on both my laptop and desktop.
I had online backup of the written part. It was 12+ years ago so even that wasn’t that common. But the main project was a composition, score + electroacoustic piece. (music master’s). At some point, I made a backup save on an external drive and forgot to change back the save location to my internal drive. One day I was using the vacuum cleaner, the hard disk power cable got caught in the vacuum cleaner and fell out. The external drive was broken, and I realized I had been making all of my saves on it. I’ve lost months of work, had to start over the piece, and I wasn’t able to submit my piece and thesis until the following semester. Now I teach computer music and I always tell that story to my students lol.
You rebel you
lol yea this makes no sense
The story: It was a composition, score + electroacoustic piece. (music master’s). At some point, I made a backup save on an external drive and forgot to change back the save location to my internal drive. One day I was using the vacuum cleaner, the hard disk power cable got caught in the vacuum cleaner and fell out. The external drive was broken, and I realized I had been making all of my saves on it. I’ve lost months of work, had to start over the piece, and I wasn’t able to submit my piece and thesis until the following semester. Now I teach computer music and I always tell that story to my students lol.
It was a composition, score + electroacoustic piece. (music master’s). At some point, I made a backup save on an external drive and forgot to change back the save location to my internal drive. One day I was using the vacuum cleaner, the hard disk power cable got caught in the vacuum cleaner and fell out. The external drive was broken, and I realized I had been making all of my saves on it. I’ve lost months of work, had to start over the piece, and I wasn’t able to submit my piece and thesis until the following semester. Now I teach computer music and I always tell that story to my students lol.
Seems like a nice feature then would be to have a person review the save file path once every week or so.
Prompt first of course, for privacy reasons.
I bought a rooster because I don’t trust my phones alarm to go off in the morning
That’s a good idea. I swear this thing is trying to get me fired.
I was curious and found this thread.
https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/libreoffice-writer-crash-and-autosave-is-off-by-default/92416/4
Apparently the newest version will enable auto save by default. Not sure why it wasn’t that way to begin with…
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…
I don’t mind auto saving in places that keep versioning. But by default for LibreOffice does sound as dangerous as not having it.
Not really, you can leave auto save on, and use the inbuilt track changes function. Best of both worlds.
Fair enough… it is impossible to make everyone happy lol.
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.
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.
This doesn’t help her right now but in the future https://www.overleaf.com/ (online LaTeX) might be an option for her.
Having cut my teeth on MS-DOS 3.0 in a 4.77MHz PC with a monochrome monitor, two floppy drives and no hard disk, it was drilled into me early to save, save, save. It’s just muscle memory for me now.
Writing a whole paper without saving is unimaginable to me.
