Discard in Original button removed from Office Save As warning so Autosave overrwites original file

Steel Contributor

Recent Insider builds of Office have removed the option to Discard in Original when you use Save As to create a new file; this means that if you open a file with the intention of saving it with a new name, any changes you make to the file before saving it under the new name are automatically saved in the original document whether you want them or not. This requires a significant change to user behaviour compared to the way F12 Save As has worked for the last 30 years. Anyone who uses old documents as templates for new ones will find them getting partially overwritten (particularly dangerous for invoices and compliance. Upon enquiring with Microsoft about what I assumed to be a bug, I was told this was removed after negative feedback to the Discard in Original button. Anyone else finding Autosave behaviour more annoying like this and wanting to add feedback to that effect? added to uservoice at https://word.uservoice.com/forums/304924-word-for-windows-desktop-application/suggestions/35345995-b...

3 Replies

The first thing I do on any new device is to disable that crappy excuse of a feature that is Autosave in its current state... you have my vote.

Ever since AutoSave was introduced (last summer?) i immediately thought of how much havoc it can cause if the finally move our local share to SPO/OneDrive. Regular users still struggle with basic options of saving files and now THIS..

Microsoft office developer stupidity have again won over simplicity!