Autosave is now ON - if you store documents in OneDrive or Sharepoint Online and use Office 365

It's a bit of a long title but you could be caught out by this. As of 25th September 2018, your Microsoft Office documents will save themselves automatically every few seconds. This is, on the whole, a fabulous thing. You don't need to remember to hit save, if your battery goes flat, computer crashes, you shut the lid etc., you changes will have been saved, if you are working collaboratively with other people on the same document, spreadsheet, presentation then you will almost instanstly see each others updates. All good, and I have especially enjoyed this feature on Office Mobile which I use a lot on IOS and Android. But there are a few instances to be aware of.

Microsoft is highlighting the following examples in the article that you will find here https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/what-it-administrators-should-know-about-autosave-88e0f80f-e5ea-441b-9c5a-259f08490ae7?ui=en-US&rs=en-GB&ad=GB

• Starting from an existing file, making edits and then doing a Save a Copy to a new file - Anyone who starts from a previous file (for example last quarter's earnings report), edits, and then does a Save a Copy to start this quarter's earnings report will cause the changes to be saved in both files if AutoSave is on. We recommend that everyone do the Save a Copy before making any changes and have even added a reminder in the product when this happens. If a user makes accidental changes, they should use the Version History feature to restore the original document. 
• Performing "hypothetical" or "what-if" changes to a file - Anyone who opens a file and does some hypothetical analysis (such as forecasting the impact of market changes on the budget) with the desire to close the file without saving will have inadvertently saved all the changes to the file while AutoSave is on. We recommend turning off AutoSave while doing the hypothetical analysis and then turning it back on once the user is ready to save again.
• Dashboards and Viewing Files with Sorts/Filters in Excel - Anyone who sorts or filters a dashboard while AutoSave is on will affect the view of everyone else in the file. If a file is meant to be a dashboard or used by multiple people with sorts and filters, we recommend setting the Read-Only Recommended property on that file using File > Info > Protect Workbook > Always Open Read-Only, so viewers of the dashboard won't save their changes unless they explicitly choose to edit the file.
• Finalized or Published Files - Anyone who accidentally edits a finalized, published file with AutoSave on will save their changes to the file. Once a file has been finalized, we recommend setting the Read-Only Recommended property or Mark as Final property on the file, so accidental edits from viewers and readers of the file won't be saved.

For the most part the Version History feature should save any blushes (I've had to use it a couple of times with the users I support), but if you are an Office 365 administrator or change leader I think you would be wise to contextualise these changes for the people you support so that they understand the benefits, and can spot a pitfall before it causes them any problems.

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