That worked well after a lot of testing, but the next problem was getting it to run on everyone’s computer. (note that the File copy section was taken from here). The format of the folders is set at the very start of the script, and again can be changed to a different format if you prefer. If files exist though, it then creates the Backup folder, creates a sub folder based on the date/time and then copies the ASD files into that folder. Then, it runs a filecheck to make sure there’s ASF files to back up. The 2 day value in (Get-Date).AddDays(-2) can be changed. If they’re > 2 days old, backup folders are purged or we’d have an ever growing amount of backups. It first sets a few variables that can be configured, then does a cleanup of previous backups. Because the AutoRecover starts at a random time, a script running every 5 minutes would also start at a random time, and together there’d be a 5 to 10 minute window on copying out the backup files, which isn’t a huge amount of work to lose if someone had been working for hours. My idea was to back up these ASD files also on a 5 minute interval, giving another avenue to restore lost documents. That file can get closed or lost depending what the user clicks (again, closing and not saving a document is a scenario that will lose the ASD). I changed this to 5 minutes rather than 10:Īutorecover will update an ASD file in this folder for each document you have open, on the frequency configured above. Microsoft Word’s Autorecover function does work quite well, in keeping an ASD file updated at regular intervals (10 minutes by default) which are saved in C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Word\ (by default). A document management system (DMS) with versioning (such as SharePoint) can help, but I’ve yet to hear of a company that has 100% of their documents at all times in their DMS!Īnyway, after seeing many scenarios of lost work, I thought there might be another method I can implement to help capture lost data. However, it’s still easy for someone to accidentally close a document and say ‘no’ to saving changes, or other scenarios where documents get overwritten with the wrong information. There’s even a new feature which autosaves your work as you go as long as the document is in SharePoint Online or OneDrive for Business. Most people are working in Microsoft Word for their documents, and although it has a bunch of nice features for autorecovering lost work, it doesn’t cover all scenarios. “I’ve lost a document and can’t find it!” is a common phrase that nobody likes to hear.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |