I can’t imagine anyone who has spent any time on a computer not having some kind of disaster with lost work. Outside of minor document losses, I have had two major losses that directly related to my writing. The first time, my laptop was stolen, and I lost ¾ of a book in progress. No hard copy or back up anywhere. I had to start over. I reassured myself repeatedly that it was a good exercise, that the writing would be clearer, more inspired, but it was all internal B.S. I was devastated.

The second time was just last year. When a person receives a document as an attachment, the document must be downloaded and saved to the desktop or hard drive or some other external drive. I know this rule and still manage to ignore it periodically. Last year, I received one of my first book edits for The Territory as a Word attachment. I was so excited to open the document and read the editor’s comments that I forgot to save the document to my desktop. To compound the problem, I rarely shut my computer down. I save my documents frequently, then I put the computer in sleep mode so that I can start it up again quickly. I worked for almost a week on the edits without realizing I wasn’t saving my document to anything! Laborious hours of rewriting. I probably had about forty hours into the document when I allowed the power to run out of the laptop and I experienced a forced shut down.

No problem, right?  That’s why Word has the Autosave function. I end up using it several times per month because I allow the battery to run down. The problem for me was, my document was never saved to my computer. And, to compound the matter, I left for a business trip and didn’t discover my problem for two days. By then, my options for recovering the document were gone. I then spent the next 5 – 7 hours trying to Google the solution and recover the document. I finally had to suck it up and start over.

So, on the chance that there may be a reader who isn’t aware yet of the options for saving your work in the clouds, I want to present a few that will hopefully keep you from ever losing work as I did.

First, I’ll throw out a tip that I would not recommend. I set up Office 2010 to automatically back up my files. I found this option during my manic Google search and decided it would keep me from ever losing another document. The problem is – that option backs up EVERY document you create, EVERY time you make a change to it. I had so many versions of my current novel that it was slowing my computer down. And, for some reason the backups all saved to my desktop. It took me another several hours of Google searches to figure out how to turn off that function. I finally deleted the countless documents that cluttered up my desktop and found an option that works much better for me.

Dropbox. I tried Google Docs and Skydrive (Microsoft’s version of Google Docs), and both have positive applications, but Dropbox made the most sense for me. I’ll offer a brief description below, but if you’re new to ‘cloud computing’ you’ll want to spend some time researching the options to find the best option for your situation.

Google Docs: I first discovered Docs a few years ago and was hooked. It is a free, web-based data storage application that allows you to create, edit and save documents. I loved the idea, but I didn’t like that I wasn’t able to work in the Microsoft Office environment while on Google. Google Docs requires you to use the Google office suite – not Microsoft Office. In all, it took too many steps to access, edit and save files. (Although, now I believe there is a Plug-in called Google Cloud Connect that allows you to work in the Office environment. I just have never used it.)

Skydrive: About the same time I became frustrated with Google Docs, I discovered Skydrive. It is Microsoft’s version of Google Docs. 25 GB of free online storage for sharing all your Office documents, spreadsheets, power points, etc. that you can access from any computer. Get password-protected access to your files from anywhere you’re online. And, it allows you to collaborate with other users on the same document by making a document public. My only complaint with Skydrive is that it’s a pain to connect and login and use the program.

Dropbox: This is the perfect solution for anyone who uses multiple computers or mobile devices. I love applications that work seamlessly in the background without me having to do anything! Dropbox is the lazy man’s (or efficient man’s) way of keeping organized and backed up. Basically, you install Dropbox on all of your computers. Then, just drop any document that you plan to work on using multiple computers, into the Dropbox on your desktop. When that document is changed on one computer, it is automatically changed on all of your other devices – without you doing anything but clicking Save! And, your documents are also available online, so you can access them anywhere, on any computer.

I store my Word document where I write my blog, as well as my novel and countless other documents in Dropbox. Now, if I need to access one of those documents from any computer I have access to it – and I know I will have the most current version of it on my computer. No more saving documents to a stick drive! And, even if all my desktop, laptop and mobile devices crash, those documents are still saved on the internet. No more lost work.