 Save, Save, Save!

You know the gameshow, The Weakest Link? The object of the game is to try to bank the most money possible each turn for the team. You can do this by saying "Bank!" right before your question is asked. If you banked in time, the money is deposited "in the kitty" and it is permanent.

Why do I bore you with something completely irrelevant to computers? Well, banking in The Weakest Link and saving a file on a computer are very similar to each other.

Let's say you're working on a document. As you're typing, you come up with great words and lines and are quite proud of your work. But, just as you're about to punch in that period, your computer stops you and flashes you with an error message. When you click "ok", the document closes and you're left staring at the blank desktop. You frantically search for the file, and then reality hits you: it's gone. Period.

Let's come back to The Weakest Link for a second. Your team so far has reached the $50,000 mark on the 6th round (out of 8 rounds). It is your turn. You feel confident. The question is asked and it was harder than you expected, and, consequently, you have absolutely no idea what the answer is. It's to late to bank. So, you take a wild guess and hope for the best. To your utter dismay, it is wrong. Thus, your team loses an opportunity for $50,000 and possibly more. Had you have banked, the team would like you and would've had over $50,000 in the kitty.

The moral of the story is: Bank, Bank, Bank--Save, Save, Save!

In other words, whenever working on an important file, always save early and often! You never know when something unexpectedly awful might happen and you lose your work forever. Most of the time, the "save" option is under "File". But an easier and quicker way to save is by using the keyboard shortcut ctrl + S. Check out the entry on Handy Keyboard Shortcuts to learn more about keyboard shortcut combinations that can save you a lot of time!

There is no harm in saving often, so why not do it? Better be safe than sorry!