Tip on mistaken exit

TechTip of the Month Contest Winner of April 2004:

Ben Cohen's tip on using Force Quit from Task Manager to return to a previous autosave!

"(...)
This is probably obvious to some, but I just left a document after an hour of work and pressed "don't save" instead of save... Luckily I had left ArchiCAD open so I forced a quit (control/alt/delete then forced quit from the task manager) and restarted ArchiCAD. I only lost my last couple of moves because of the auto save function ................ sweet
I then gave my PC a big hug"

Here's a way how (not:) to do it: if you mistakenly choose "Don't Save" when you close a file but ArchiCAD keeps running, there is a way to get back to the last saved autosave of the file closed (On Windows):

1. Do NOT close ArchiCAD.
2. Instead, open the Task Manager by pressing down the Ctrl+Alt+Del keys.

   

3. On Windows XP, choose the Applications Tab page, highlight ArchiCAD,
4. and click on the End Task button (lower left button).
5. A new dialog pops up telling you that the program is not responding. Choose End Now to shut down ArchiCAD (Force Quit). This might take a few seconds, so be patient.

   

6. If another window pops up after this, we suggest not to send an Error Report to Microsoft about this "problem" : - as it really is not a real problem...
7. Restart ArchiCAD (i.e. simply from the Start Menu)
8. When ArchiCAD is starting up, it checks automatically for the autosaved version of the file that was in use during the last Force Quit, so it asks whether to open it or not (Choose Yes).
9. There you have it - maybe Ben's tip saved you quite some work, didn't it!

Hint: of course Autosave has to be switched ON under Options/Preferences/Data Safety... in ArchiCAD, either with the save every n steps or save every n seconds option:

Page last updated: Thursday, September 16, 2004