The need to click Save in Microsoft Office

Modern versions of Office (Word/Excel/Powerpoint) include a feature called AUTORECOVER which you will already be using and saves a copy of file(s) you are working on every few minutes (standard setting is every 10 mins but this can be altered).

This is not a substitute for regularly saving your work by clicking Save. Manually saving your file is the surest way to preserve the work you have done. Click the icon or do Ctrl + S.  It only takes a second.

More on Autorecover

Autorecover saves to a separate location and includes other information like your workspace (eg if Excel crashes, autorecover will 'remember' what files you had open and how the windows were arranged).

If your PC crashes while you are in Word, Excel or Powerpoint then the next time they open, the program will attempt to open the autorecover versions of any files you were working on.

Note that the original file is not altered by autorecover, to save back to that you need to do so yourself as above.

Why isn't there just an autosave function so Word/Excel/Powerpoint can save my file for me?

• Imagine you work on Excel spreadsheet or Word document for a few minutes, type in a few changes and then change your mind and close it without saving.  If the file had 'autosaved' itself without your knowledge, the original would have been overwritten, even though you didn't want it to.
• Or you open a file and accidentally remove or add some text.  If the original file then saved automatically in the background those changes would be permanent.

Some more information on this topic is here from Microsoft -

http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/word-help/automatically-save-and-recover-office-files-HP010140729.aspx?CTT=1