Awhile ago I wrote an article on TUAW (now Engadget) about auto-saving in Microsoft Word.
This was mentioned in Mac Power Users #279 but unfortunately the download links for the macro are broken because I am the literal worst about keeping things online.
(Yet another reason I am glad this forum exists, it's a better place to post my macros.)
You can go read the original article if you want, but here’s the nut of how it works:
Create a Keyboard Maestro macro which is triggered every X minute(s) (I suggest X = 1) and when Microsoft Word deactivates, have the Keyboard Maestro macro run this AppleScript:
tell application "Microsoft Word"
if it is running then
save active document
end if
end tell
If you want to get a little more fancy, you can avoid some edge cases for annoyances by using this instead:
tell application "Microsoft Word"
if running then
if documents is not missing value then
tell active document
if (not saved and path contains ":") then save
end tell
end if
end if
end tell
That will avoid some errors if the document hasn’t been saved yet or if there is no actual open document in MSWord.
Disclaimer: I’m no AppleScript expert, I just cobbled this together from examples I found around the web. Use at your own risk, etc.
I also made another little macro that will prompt me whenever MSWord activates and the current document is Not Saved. It just displays a notification, but that’s usually enough to get my attention.
You can get the fancy version of the Auto-Save macro and the notification macro here:
Auto-Save MSWord.kmmacros (6.4 KB)