Use autosave and versions in OS X Lion
With Mac OS X Lion, you get Auto Save and Versions-- two new features that are gonna save you a lot of trouble when it comes to editing documents.
With the Auto Save and Versions, you don't have to worry about losing any unsaved work.
Let's open TextEdit to show you how it works.
Whenever you make a new document, you only have to save it once.
You just do the usual File, Save, and give it a name.
That's the last time you'll have to do that because from now on, TextEdit will periodically save changes as you make them.
Once you make an edit, you'll see Edit It show up at the top bar of the file.
Click it and you'll see a little menu.
Lock, let's you lock the files so that no more changes can be made.
It's useful if you want to create a template or just prevent your doc from being changed.
If it is the template, you can use Duplicate in this menu to quickly create and open a copy of that file.
Now, if you're editing a document and realized that you want to get it
back to the way it was when you open it, click Edit It and hit Revert to Last Saved Version.
Below that option is Browse All Versions.
Now, the Auto Save backs up all your changes.
You can browse all versions of a document.
Click Browse All Versions to see how it works.
On the left is the current version and on the right is where you browse all previous versions.
Along the side is a visual timeline of the different versions with their timestamp.
Just click the version you want to revert to and hit "Restore." You can always
go forward or backwards in time by going back to Browse All Versions.
Right now, only a few Apple-branded apps like TextEdit and iWork Support (Auto Save and Versions).
But hopefully, other apps will be updated to incorporate these features.
If you have any more questions, feel free to ask me on my Facebook page and visit howto.cnet.com for more videos like these.
For CNET, I'm Sharon Vaknin and I'll see you on the interwebs.
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