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When I want to save a document in Pages, why does it say Save a Version? Is that different than when I used to use Save As in Word under MS Office?
 
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So you can revert to the original should you not like any changes it shows you a tutorial of this when you first open Pages.
 

chscag

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Also, "save a version" is new with Lion. It works with Textedit as well as it does for Pages.
 

vansmith

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If you want to "Save As", you need to choose the Export option in the menu.
 
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chas_m

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Maybe it's just the way I work, but I found the Versions and Autosave features to be FANTASTIC additions to the system, that have eliminated the possibility of me overwriting a file I didn't want to overwrite.

When I use Pages, I either start from a completely new document or from one of my previous documents (let's say a proposal I'm going to open from an old project and alter to make a new proposal). With a new document of course it works exactly as you'd expect: you create a new file (from template or blank) and start working. Everything you're doing is automatically saved, so you will not lose any work even if Time Machine isn't enabled: no need to keep saving every five minutes (which nobody remembers to do anyway), it's being done for you. You can do it manually ("Save a Version") just to make you happy if you like.

If you're opening an old document (ie you haven't worked on this recently), it's automatically locked. As soon as you try to make a change, Pages points this out and offers to either unlock it or create a duplicate. If you don't care about overwriting the old one, choose unlock. If you do care, create a dupe and then close the old one. Either way, from there you carry on as before with your work being autosaved. I find this to be exactly ONE CLICK more work than using "Save As" on a document I don't want to overwrite.

So I opened my old proposal, made a dupe, close the old proposal and am altering my new one, working merrily along. Let's say it's quite complex and needs lots of alternations. I get tired after a while so I just quit the program; the work is already saved.

Next time I open Pages, there's my proposal right where I left it. After my night's sleep, I've decided that a few of the changes I made aren't necessary or need revision: I can now step back through the document's history to the point before I made those changes and pick up from that point.

I often have to do stuff like this, and the Lion features make this soooooo much easier than keeping multiple versions of everything I work on around in case the client changes their mind about something.

I find it works just as well with new documents I don't need to make changes on as well. Frankly I wish every program had these features.
 

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