Automatically Save Message Drafts

Posted by Justin Premick

Save and Restore Your Drafts Ever been working on a message, and then clicked away from the edit screen without saving? Or wished you could undo your changes and revert to what you had before? Or had problems with your computer and had to restart without being able to save your work?

You’ve probably at least once wished you could go back and recover the text that you’d entered in a message.

Well, now you can.

Introducing AWeber’s Message Auto-Save

When you’re editing a message, we’ll now automatically save your work every 2 minutes.

And we won’t save just the most recent draft — you can view and restore from up to your 5 most recent drafts!

Press play to see this feature in action:

When Can This Feature Save The Day?

Some situations where auto-save can be a real time (and work!) saver:

You inadvertently click away from the Edit Message screen before saving.

You’re working on an HTML message and make a change that you can’t undo from the WYSIWYG, or you enter some invalid HTML while working in the message source and can’t find it.

Your computer crashes or you have a power failure.

You’re editing a message to try some new copy, and you decide you don’t like the changes you just made.

Your session times out — actually, the way this feature works, your session won’t time out while editing a message, because we’re checking for changes every 2 minutes!

This is currently “live” for ~~autoresponder and follow up messages, and will be going live for broadcasts in the next few days~~ both follow up and broadcast messages in an AWeber account. Update: 09/05/07

For more on the new auto-save feature, check out our Knowledge Base:

How Do I Restore Work in a Follow Up Message?

How Do I Restore Work in a Broadcast Message?

How Do Auto Saved Drafts Protect Me?

Tags: New Features

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28 Responses

Jan
August 30th, 2007 at 12:44 pm

This is wonderful. My session timed out 3 days ago, and I was so upset. I had created a fantastic AR message, and then when I clicked "Save," Aweber told me that my session timed out and I couldn’t recover the message. The BACK button did nothing for me.

Talk about frustrating!

Thank you for adding this feature. Wordpress has an auto-save feature, just like this, and it’s so helpful. Glad to hear that my sessions won’t be "timing out" anymore!
Codrut Turcanu
August 30th, 2007 at 1:55 pm

hi Jan,

Yes, you’re right - this feature is a must.

Keep up the great work.
Trevor Simpson
August 30th, 2007 at 2:02 pm

You guys just get better and better. I think this is particularly important for new users to your program. It’s actually before they become familiar with the different features that it will also be of invaluable use. BTW, I have a hunch you were waiting to launch this after your Birthday eh! Anyway, keep on with the great work! It’s worth every single cent I pay.
Julie
August 30th, 2007 at 4:26 pm

YEAH!! Finally!!

Can’t tell you how many times I SCREAMED because I have lost
work!

Thank you. Thank you.
Kim
August 30th, 2007 at 6:08 pm

You rock! Thanks so much!
Ben
August 30th, 2007 at 7:22 pm

Oh wow, nice! I’ve been composing my email messages in Notepad because I didn’t want to lose my work. This definitely eliminates one big reason I had to go about doing that.

Thanks!
Erin
August 31st, 2007 at 11:49 am

Thank-you SO much! I can’t tell you how many messages I’ve lost because I hadn’t saved them and they just disappeared (a big duh! on my part)
Arindam
August 31st, 2007 at 6:31 pm

Really a great feature. In fact, the auto save feature of Gmail was one of the reasons why I switched to it Great to see it in aweber too. I would also like to see a feature which allows me to save drafts of messages for future: I mean: creating a message but not sending it right away!
Chris
September 1st, 2007 at 3:30 am

its my first day as member but i must say, that the whole service are amazing. i am from germany, and all my services and programms which i bought are from america … i think europe is around 3-5 years behind america ^^ But its good so far, you can easily build a internet company working internet business

Best regards
Ann L.
September 1st, 2007 at 2:09 pm

I noticed this happening yesterday and I wondered what had changed.
I don’t know how many times I lost work while previewing or something and it was just gone. That was soooo frustrating and time consuming. Thank you so much for such a welcomed tool!
Stacey`
September 4th, 2007 at 9:41 am

God bless you guys! I have been wanting/needing this feature
and am so happy it’s here!
Internet Empire
September 4th, 2007 at 1:32 pm

Great feature. Been waiting for it for a long long time. It’s about time.
Lou
September 4th, 2007 at 2:35 pm

Allelujah! No more pulling out my hair!
Dr. MaryAnn
September 7th, 2007 at 9:12 am

This is great news! Like you, I’ve experienced the loss of a nearly finished document. I so appreciate your adding this feature to your growing list of great helps for your clients.
Fabian Tan
September 7th, 2007 at 9:35 am

This is awesome!

One question: will it slow down performance occasionally?
Marc Kline
September 7th, 2007 at 9:47 am

Fabian,

Not at all! When you’re working on your messages, this feature runs in the background. It should not, by any means, slow your system or the performance of the AWeber service.
John
September 7th, 2007 at 10:18 am

Very handy feature. The number of times that I´ve lost work over this very issue! now should only use 2 minutes worth at any one time which is great.

Would be great to have a feature that underakes auto save when a specific task is undertaken e.g. If we accidentally browse away before saving it automatically makes a save after that action. This way we would not even loose the 2 minutes worth of work which would be even better.

Thanks again for this great new feature.
Paul Elliott
September 7th, 2007 at 10:34 am

This is great!

Will it soon be available for all editing features of AWeber, i.e., Opt In Boxes, etc.?
Simon
September 7th, 2007 at 11:43 am

This can clearly compete in the "most love feature of 2007" contest. I can’t count how many times I have edited an email for half an hour, the got sidetracked and by the time I return to the message something bad has happened.

Either the session times out, the cat unplugged the internet connection or some other application decided to open a webpage in THAT broweser window. It’s so frustrating.

I’m glad you have a solution on place.
Ken Jensen
September 7th, 2007 at 12:01 pm

This is so sweet! I wish MySpace had such a tool. Nothing quite brings out the Marine war vet anger in me like losing a beautifully written message, from the heart, with one wrong click of a button. LOL!

This is a fantastic addition to your service!
Will
September 7th, 2007 at 11:21 pm

Well done guys,

Yet another valuable feature. It’s nice to see a company that actually listens to it’s users and continues to build the product around their exact needs and desires…
Very important Feature now at AWeber
September 8th, 2007 at 5:55 am

[...] Now, I have an autosave option for MS Word and I click save rather often as well, I just don`t want to lose any more text. And finally, my favorite Autoresponder has this feature as well. AWeber has the automatically save as default. [...]
Mr Carter
September 9th, 2007 at 12:15 pm

A definant hair saver! because loseing information that I just worked hard on makes me pull my hair out.
Thank you so much for including the autosave feature.
Joel
September 9th, 2007 at 7:12 pm

I don’t like it… the autosave interrupts my work as it takes 10-15 seconds to save and refresh the screen. I don’t see the need. Contect creation should happen external to the Aweber site and there should never be a risk of losing creative work.

How can I turn it off?
Marc Kline
September 10th, 2007 at 7:55 am

Joel,

Outside of seeing drafts appear near the top of the page, this feature runs entirely transparent to the user. Your screen should not refresh every time a draft is saved. It sounds as if there may be a browser issue that should be easily remedied.

Our support team will get in touch with you by email to make sure any issues are resolved. You’re also more than welcome to give us a call if you’d prefer to speak by phone.
Groves
September 12th, 2007 at 3:07 pm

Beautiful. Just saved my message.

Thanks guys!
Francis
September 13th, 2007 at 9:03 pm

I’m running into the same problem as Joel with the AutoSave. When I first open my message to edit, everything freezes for 10-15 seconds before I even start anything. Then, afterwards every couple of minutes it freezes again for 15-20 seconds. It’s very frustrating trying to edit my newsletter.

This is not a problem with my computer or Internet connection. I can use other browser windows without any problem even while the AutoSave in taking place. I am using IE 7.0 and WinXP.

I like the idea of AutoSave because many a time I have lost hours worth of work because I forgot to save. But hopefully this is a bug that will be worked out soon.

Another feature I’d like to see is Save (without closing the message)

Thanks
Justin Premick
September 14th, 2007 at 11:11 am

Hi Francis,

We’re not able to duplicate what you’re referring to, and the Auto-Save shouldn’t affect anything when first opening a message (since it only saves after each 2 minutes).

I’ll be in touch with you to help further.

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