90 MACWORLD SEPTEMBER 2020
WORKINGMAC HOW TO FIX ‘CANNOT BE AUTOSAVED’ BUGmacOS apps dating back nearly a decade:
“The document could not be autosaved.
Your most recent changes might be lost.”
The dialog box explaining this has an OK
button and nothing else.
What’s the explanation? It appears to
be a permissions problem between
so-called “sandboxed” apps and the
operating system about whether a file may
be written to or not. A sandboxed app is
one delivered from the App Store,
including Apple’s own free and paid apps,
that has a number of restrictions placed
upon it that increase user privacy and
security. Sandboxed apps can only
perform certain tasks and with certain
files. (Apps offered directly by developers
have freer range, but you may have to
approve certain kinds of access
[go.macworld.com/iacc] via the
Security & Privacy preference
pane’s Privacy tab.)
Savvy users have figured out
that this problem can be fixed by
emptying the recent documents
list. In affected software, choose
File → Open Recent → Clear Menu. When
this bug occurs, this action appears to free
up slots for save or refresh permissions.
Some users have only had the autosave
issue occur when working with extremely
large files; others, when they have lots of
documents open.
If you encounter the problem and
clearing recent files doesn’t solve it, here
are a few more strategies:
> Create a fresh document, copy the
old document’s contents (Edit → Select All),
paste them into the new document, and
save immediately.
> Disable autosaving, which is a
preference in the General preference
pane labeled “Ask to keep changes when
closing documents.” With this box
checked, autosave no longer occurs. You
can use the Save feature, and will be
prompted to save when closing a
document.
> Divide the document into smaller
separate files by copying and pasting it a
piece at a time into new documents and
saving those. ■This dialog seems to indicate something is off
with sandboxing, a security feature.
The General preference pane lets you set continuous
saving for supported apps.