[GNC] Autosave question

Sun Oct 4 10:01:14 EDT 2026

Attach a screen grab of your current settings (along with type and version of the OS, and version of gnc) for auto save as that seems to be incorrectly set. This will allow folks here to weigh in.

>From what you are saying, it seems like you have done the opposite of what is required to auto-save. 

The main pertinent setting I can see (others can keep me honest here) is “Show auto-save confirmation question.” and if you “checked” that then it is doing exactly as it says – its prompting you to save; not automagically save. Secondary important settings for auto-save are the “Auto-save time interval” which should be set reasonable (I keep it at 5 mins) and “Retain log/backup files” which should be set reasonable as well (I keep it at 10 days) but this will consume more disk space. None of these time intervals should be less than one if you want them to be effective.

If you have checked “Enable timeout on ‘Save changes on exit’ question” set to value greater than 1 then it is waiting that many seconds with a prompt when quitting the program (which is what Windows reboot will do – graceful shutdown of the application before killing the process) before it will exit *without* saving if you don’t respond within that time period. This is what your system seems to be configured for doing.

Also if you know that M$ is installing updates in the background without your knowledge, you can either run the computer off the network (by pulling the cord out from the network card) and prevent that or why leave any application open and running without saving anything when you know that for fact? I get that some of the commercial apps (such as M$ Office) have ability to pick up from where you left off after reboot but that is not true of the entire universe of apps. You are looking to invite trouble if you are doing that as it is not the best practice to leave any app open with data files still in use.

From: scum buster <scumbuster at comcast.net> 
Sent: Saturday, October 03, 2026 6:37 PM
To: Kalpesh Patel <kalpesh.patel at usa.net>; 'Clint Chaplin' <joatmon at gmail.com>
Cc: 'Robert Heller' <heller at deepsoft.com>; 'David T.' <sunfish62 at yahoo.com>; gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Subject: Re: [GNC] Autosave question

It has NEVER prompted me to save.......I have that popup turned off in the setting. I have the "autosave" option checked.

On 10/2/2026 8:41 PM, Kalpesh Patel wrote:

If it pops up and you don’t take any action to save then all those transactions accumulated since last save will stay pending to be saved; you’ll have to click on File à Save to persist them on to the disk at your choosing. This would be also the case for when it is shutting down because the shutdown process will kill the process without saving. If you are automagically looking for the system to press  yes for that prompt when you asked for it to prompt you then it is not going to do it for you. That dialogue is for you to take the action; not for the system.

Understand the ramifications of not setting up to automatically save and have it prompt to you for saving it very thoroughly. While option is there to prompt for save, it makes little sense in normal use case by a laymen to not automatically save all the time at certain interval rather than prompt for it.

Knowing how GNC behaves, when you said “One of the options was to save this time, one was to sautomagically save all the time without asking, etc.  I still have it pop up.” that is likely that the setting you select during that pop up it is only good going forward for that session of the GNC run and not saved persistently to the disk. Once you exit and relaunch, it will re-read setting from the disk and return back to prompting unless you go into Edit à Preferences à General and setup auto-save settings. If you uncheck ‘Show auto-save confirmation question’ in there, it will always save at that interval without prompting (auto save does *not* overwrite existing file; it creates a new file with a timestamp in the name of the file). Right underneath is also setting to timeout display of that “save now” pop-up so if you do not act within that allotted prompt time and system ends up dismissing it due to time out then it won’t save and all changes accumulated since last save will be pending to be saved as well. 

HTH.

From: Clint Chaplin  <mailto:joatmon at gmail.com> <joatmon at gmail.com> 
Sent: Friday, October 02, 2026 8:05 PM
To: Kalpesh Patel  <mailto:kalpesh.patel at usa.net> <kalpesh.patel at usa.net>
Cc: scum buster  <mailto:scumbuster at comcast.net> <scumbuster at comcast.net>; Robert Heller  <mailto:heller at deepsoft.com> <heller at deepsoft.com>; David T.  <mailto:sunfish62 at yahoo.com> <sunfish62 at yahoo.com>; gnucash-user at gnucash.org <mailto:gnucash-user at gnucash.org> 
Subject: Re: [GNC] Autosave question

One other possibility; the default setup on my windows installation was to pop up a window when autosave was triggered to ask the user what to do.  One of the options was to save this time, one was to sautomagically save all the time without asking, etc.  I still have it pop up.  If that option is enabled, what happens when shut down?

On Fri, Oct 2, 2026 at 4:56 PM Kalpesh Patel <kalpesh.patel at usa.net <mailto:kalpesh.patel at usa.net> > wrote:

That sounds like your backend storage might be the cloud storage or you 
have very old drive that is not flushing cache before powering down. 
Assuming it is Intel pc, make sure BIOS settings for hard drive is set to 
AHCI mode and set it as removable or hot swappable drive type which should 
force it to flush cache upon power down command is sent to it.

-----
Excuse the typos. It's the mobile thingy!

On October 2, 2026 6:59:05 PM scum buster <scumbuster at comcast.net <mailto:scumbuster at comcast.net> > wrote:

>
> I have it set to autosave and apparantly it ISNT autosaving.....its not
> just one transaction that gets lost...its a bunch, which were done
> during my last session (if I did not manually save it).
>
> On 10/1/2026 5:56 PM, Kalpesh Patel wrote:
>> I have the pre-build binaries of the 4.14 version running on Windows and it
>> auto saves as well. If anything it would only be the current in-flight
>> transaction not saved.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Robert Heller <heller at deepsoft.com <mailto:heller at deepsoft.com> >
>> Sent: Thursday, October 01, 2026 2:29 PM
>> To: David T. <sunfish62 at yahoo.com <mailto:sunfish62 at yahoo.com> >
>> Cc: gnucash-user at gnucash.org <mailto:gnucash-user at gnucash.org> ; David Carlson <david.carlson.417 at gmail.com <mailto:david.carlson.417 at gmail.com> >; ?
>> scum buster <scumbuster at comcast.net <mailto:scumbuster at comcast.net> >
>> Subject: Re: [GNC] Autosave question
>>
>> I'm still using a built-from-source 4.14, and the auto-save does in fact
>> save the file.
>>
>> At Thu, 01 Oct 2026 21:42:17 +0530 "David T." <sunfish62 at yahoo.com <mailto:sunfish62 at yahoo.com> > wrote:
>>
>>> I don't use this feature, but the documentation very clearly states:
>>>
>>> "Auto-save time interval: This field sets the number of minutes between
>> each automatic saving of the file. Set to 0 to disable the auto-save
>> feature."
>>> This (and the name of the preference) would strongly suggest that the
>> feature is supposed to, ahem, *save* the file in question, and not just toss
>> up a reminder.
>>> But, I'm sure I've misread things.
>>>
>>> David T.
>>>
>>> On October 1, 2026 8:50:27 PM GMT+05:30, David Carlson
>> <david.carlson.417 at gmail.com <mailto:david.carlson.417 at gmail.com> > wrote:
>>>> iirc, auto save is only a reminder, not an action.  However, you
>>>> should be able to import transactions entered after the last manual
>>>> save using the replay logs feature.
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Oct 1, 2026 at 7:56C"B
>
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