Forum Discussion
AutoSave feature causing frustration
HI Marli van Staden.
First of all, before editing the registry be EXTREMELY careful!
If you make a mistake you can render the machine unusable.
(You should also make a backup of the registry before modifying it.)
All this said, if you want to try, you have to ADD the "DontAutoSave" key inside "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Excel". The key type should be DWORD and its value should be 1.
Also, as an introduction to editing the registry, you can give a look to https://www.howtogeek.com/school/using-windows-admin-tools-like-a-pro/lesson5/
Hope it helps...
adam deltinger Thanks for the pointer. Unfortunately, it does nothing to solve the real problem because at the end of the day, due to the way "auto-save" was implemented, it changes the meaning of "last modified". It used to be that "last modified" really told you when the last intentional change was made to the file.
By design, the auto-save feature (which is very important in and of itself), renders the "last modified" field meaningless, or rather, it completely changed its meaning. It now tells you that someone has opened this file, even if only for reading purposed. You can no longer tell when the last real change was made. Had Microsoft understood this, they clearly could have found a technological solution (programming) to detect when a user actually made a change to a file, versus when they simply opened it without making any changes. I am astonished that nobody at Microsoft thought of the critical importance of the "last modified" field in daily work, in the way that users search for files. For example "I can't remember the file's name, but I am sure it is the presentation that was the last one I changed". Well, until auto-save, it was no problem to identify that file. Simply sort on "last modified". To make things even worse, I now think twice before opening a file because I don't want to needlessly alter the "last modified" value for the file, if it wasn't really the one I meant to open. THIS IS A HUGE OVERHEAD OF BIG HEADACHE added to the daily work of millions of users. Auto-save is an important feature, but why did we have to give up the incredible useful "last modified"??????? Why has it been two years now, and they still haven't fixed it??????? With all due respect, solutions that require retraining will never work sufficiently, and they increase the load of things to do and remember, instead of making our lives easier with technology. There is no reason I should ever need to think about whether to turn "autosave" on or off for any given file, or when I'm in a rush, have to berate myself for forgetting to do it. Technology is supposed to solve problems, not create new ones. And what drives me crazy is that the technological solution is no rocket science!!!! It just requires some thought!!!!