Autosave and Keynote 6.2.2 documents on an NTFS formatted Windows Server network drive

[cdyson]

I work in a large secondary school, with 1200 pupils, as the IT Systems Manager. During the summer holiday this year I undertook a programme to upgrade our 120 iMacs and 400 Macbook Pros from 10.8.5 to 10.9.4 so that I could upgrade iWork to the latest version. This was completed and everything looked good for the start of the new academic year.

How wrong was I!

Students started using the iWork documents that had been created in the previous 2 years that they have been using OS X and iWork but the Autosave function, which is a permanent feature of the new iWork and can't be disabled as far as I am aware, does not work with documents on NTFS formatted network drives. All of the student's home drives are stored on a Windows Server 2008 R2 SAN. These home drives are mapped, using SMB, to the users desktop at login using a script. This has become a major problem as students have been opening up their work from their network home drive, editing their iWork documents and getting Autosave error messages every 5 minutes. When the student has finished editing their iWork document they click save and an error splash box pops up telling them "This document can not be auto-saved". I have tried duplicating the document and moving the autosave location to the desktop but I get the same error. The only way to exit an iWork app is to close and revert to the unedited version, thus losing the work the student has been doing for the last hour.

The only workaround I have been able to find is to copy the document from the student's network drive to the desktop before they open the document. This enables autosave to function correctly and stops corruption of the iWork document.

This is getting extremely frustrating as I am getting 20 - 25 students at my office with this problem every day.

Is there any way to disable the Autosave function in the new version of iWork and save my sanity?

[stevevalle · Accepted solution]

Hi @cdyson

From what I have read, the following code will disable the AutoSave feature and enable Save As in the File menu

defaults write com.apple.iWork.Keynote ApplePersistence -bool no

defaults write com.apple.iWork.Pages ApplePersistence -bool no

defaults write com.apple.iWork.Numbers ApplePersistence -bool no

To revert back to AutoSave, change the no to a yes.

Tested on Keynote v6.2.2, Pages v5.2.2 & Numbers v3.2.2

Hope this helps

[cdyson]

That is the perfect answer I've been after. Thank you!

[ToriAnneke]

Wow!!! Great find!!!

Thanks!!

[cdyson]

Incidentally, the terminal commands are on a per user basis.

To make sure all network users had iWork Autosave disabled we had to create a custom Managed Preference in Casper JSS to change each user's preference files for the iWork apps when they logon.

[dprakash]

@cdyson do you have the configuration profile you're using?