Changes regularly being lost in Word document

Question

Hi, my normal method of working with Word documents is on my Desktop (using a MacBook), AutoSave Off.  I just prefer to manage my documents from the Desktop, for various reasons.  I save manually every few minutes, then once or twice a day I save to OneDrive.  For the past week, I have found that the previous day's changes have been deleted from the Desktop version, though they remain on the OneDrive version.  Only the previous day's changes are affected.  Can you explain why this is happening?

Answer 1

I'm not using AutoSave.  I save my Desktop Word documents to OneDrive using 'Save as'.  The problem is that changes made and saved to my Word documents disappear from the Desktop version overnight - but only the changes made the previous day.  I'm definitely working on and saving the desktop version, not the One Drive version.

Answer 2

How are you saving to OneDrive, specifically? Note that if you are using Save As from within Word, the edits that you are doing afterwards will apply to the new version (unless you explicitly close the new version and return to your locally saved original of course).

Thanks very much for this suggestion.  I have been closing the new version and returning to my locally saved original.  In fact, I'd been doing the same thing for a long time without any problems.  Looking back, I realise that losing the previous day's work on my Desktop version only started after I'd installed the latest update of Microsoft 365, which makes me wonder whether I should take another approach to saving my documents.

Answer 3

Instead of using Save As, simply copy the document to OneDrive after having signed in to your account at https://onedrive.live.com. I think this is the safest way to overcome the issue.

Answer 4

How are you saving to OneDrive, specifically? Note that if you are using Save As from within Word, the edits that you are doing afterwards will apply to the new version (unless you explicitly close the new version and return to your locally saved original of course).

Answer 5

AutoSave on the QAT is only applicable to files opened from, or saved to OneDrive