Disabling Fast Saves

The Fast Save feature is a good idea – it can speed up the time you spend waiting on your system to perform the necessary task of saving your work. The way the feature works, however, provides a lot of opportunities for spying eyes. When activated, Fast Save doesn’t actually resave your document every time you use the Ctrl+S hotkey or click on the little disk icon on the toolbar. Rather, it only appends any changes you make to the original document. This means anything you put into the document – including comments and information you thought you deleted – are still accessible to anyone who has a copy of the document and a little time to figure out how to get to the information. This may sound like something better left for a forensic specialist, but it is easier than that – most text editors will be able to reveal the history of changes to the document. To be on the safe side, you can turn the Fast Save feature off:

1. On the Tools menu select Options
2. Click on the Save tab
3. Under the Save options section uncheck the box beside Allow fast saves
4. Click OK

You may spend a little extra time waiting for your documents to save, but it beats having to deal with the consequences of exposing private data!