"Save as" vs "Save a copy"

Dear Mike_Compas,

Good day! Thank you for posting to Microsoft Community. We are happy to help you.

As per your description, please don’t worry, we can work together to narrow down and resolve the situation.

In Word 365, the "Save A Copy" saves the document under a new name, but the original stays open for editing, not the new one.  And the "Save As" You save the document under a new name, and the new file stays open for editing.

As you mentioned, "I don't have "Save as" button " I suspect in your Word document there is an autosave button in the top corner that has switched on. Turning that off seemed to appear Save as" button in Word document.

Your understanding and patience will be highly appreciated. I hope that you are keeping safe and well!

Sincerely,

Waqas Muhammad

Save a Copy will replace Save As when you open a document in Word Online (= the browser version).

The automatic saves on OneDrive mean that you have to use Save as Copy before you start making changes to the file, or those changes will be saved to both the copy and the original. See https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/save-a-copy-before-editing-to-prevent-changing-the-original-file-8aeabebe-952e-449b-b931-ae2b7568771b.

Hi Mike_Compas,

I'm writing a follow up this case, may I know have you checked above reply? Feel free to post back if you need further assistance.

Sincerely, 

Waqas Muhammad

Hello, Muhammad!

Thank you for your prompt reply and sorry for delaying with mine.

Yes, you're right, the Autosave was on and when I've turned it off the "Save as" took it's place again instead of "Save a copy".

But to be honest, who remembers to toggle On or Off the "Autosafe"? Who thinks about saving an existing document under another name? Usually, we think to save it under a new name while working on it, do we?

So if you can help me with combining these two options - "Aoutosave" on and "Save as" available - I'll be even more grateful :)

Regards, Michael

Hi Hi Mike_Compas,

Thanks for your valuable feedback and sharing updates with us and I really appreciate your effort and your precious time doing. 

 And I appreciate your kind words.

First, please allow me to explain the expected behavior.

The that AutoSave will automatically save the changes to the file if user makes them and before we makes any changes, we goes to File and clicks Save a Copy to download a copy of the file. Take note that it will normally give you a prompt "Do you want the original document to remain the same" if you use the Save As option after making changes to an original document. In this scenario Microsoft would recommend that you select the "Save a Copy" before making your changes. You may check this link for your reference:

In Word, go to File ->Options >Save and set that to "Save to your PC by default" and you can choose a preferred Save folder. They should really re-think the AutoSave function and allow that for locally saved files as well . . .

If you want the old behavior you will have to save the document to your local drive and you can't save to the local OneDrive folder, because that means the files will be synchronized with OneDrive. Any folder which is local and NOT synchronized to OneDrive will do.

I hope my above information a help you a bit.

Your understanding and patience will be highly appreciated. I hope that you are keeping safe and well!

Sincerely,

Waqas Muhammad

Hi, Muhammad!

Thanks for the detailed explanation.

I've started to do this, but hope very much the developers and project managers will start once ask end users what they really need or would they really need specific feature or not.

I understand, that autosaving a document on the cloud now is limited to saving to the same file, but don't understand why. Why it's not saved under a temporary name?

Never mind, thanks for your assistance, I've found "my" button )

Sincerely, Michael

Hi Mike_Compas,

Thanks for your valuable feedback and sharing updates with us and I really appreciate your effort and your precious time doing. 

 And I appreciate your kind words.

Regarding to, "I've started to do this, but hope very much the developers and project managers will start once ask end users what they really need or would they really need specific feature or not." we feel your pain due to this limitation and we’re really feel sorry for it. Regarding to your concern, I request you, please send/provided feedback to related development team via Microsoft Word feedback portal, so that they can get notice about it, and we are sure it will speed up this process. Your advice is very important to us.

We can expect this feature to be used in the future in Office app.

Your understanding and patience will be highly appreciated. I hope that you are keeping safe and well!

Sincerely,

Waqas Muhammad

Done )

I've sent my feedback. Hope to see changes in future )