Title: How does the auto-save function work?
Last modified: August 19, 2016

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# How does the auto-save function work?

 *  [buskerdog](https://wordpress.org/support/users/buskerdog/)
 * (@buskerdog)
 * [17 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-does-the-auto-save-function-work/)
 * I assist someone else with their blog periodically. Yesterday he emailed me in
   a panic that he’d spent 5 hours working on an epic post only to have “something”
   happen and the whole thing disappear. I located a draft of the post for him but
   it only had the first few lines in it. Whenever I work on fixing posts for him
   I notice the autosave function updating every few minutes or so. I just ran a
   test and found that even if I close out of the window without saving the post
   it still retained it as a draft for me.
 * Why would someone else have had a lengthy post disappear even with the autosave
   function operating? I even looked directly in the MySQL database to see if I 
   could find the post but it wasn’t there. Thoughts?

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

 *  [MichaelH](https://wordpress.org/support/users/michaelh/)
 * (@michaelh)
 * [17 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-does-the-auto-save-function-work/#post-872861)
 * Maybe the problem the person experience happened long before they realized there
   was a problem, and that the auto-save didn’t happen because of that problem.
 * WordPress 2.6 also introduced the concept of post revisions so maybe you can 
   use that as an excuse to upgrade that blog to the current version of WordPress.
 *  Thread Starter [buskerdog](https://wordpress.org/support/users/buskerdog/)
 * (@buskerdog)
 * [17 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-does-the-auto-save-function-work/#post-872948)
 * This person finds new and innovative ways to create problems, so you’re probably
   right.
 * As for upgrading, I’m afraid because I’ve made so many little customizations 
   and the database is so huge that if upgrading caused a problem I’d be up a creek.
   Maybe someday…
 *  [MichaelH](https://wordpress.org/support/users/michaelh/)
 * (@michaelh)
 * [17 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-does-the-auto-save-function-work/#post-872977)
 * Upgrading because the database is huge should not be cause for concern if you
   do a backup before staring the upgrade.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

The topic ‘How does the auto-save function work?’ is closed to new replies.

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 3 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [MichaelH](https://wordpress.org/support/users/michaelh/)
 * Last activity: [17 years, 8 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-does-the-auto-save-function-work/#post-872977)
 * Status: not resolved

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