Why can i only Save a Copy in word

Q: Why Does Word have save a copy instead of Save As?

Editors use the Save a Copy or Save As commands mainly to create incremental versions (back up copies) of their projects. Save a Copy seems to make the most sense for todays workflows. Save A Copy: saves the document under a new name, but the original stays open for editing, not the new one.

Q: Why is Word not letting me save my work?

If youve turned on AutoSave, turn it off. If youve used Track Changes, then turn it off and resolve all the changes in the document. Then use Save As to save out the document under a new file name. If you still cant save your edited document, then there is a good chance that the document is corrupted in some way.

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Need more help?
Why Does Word have save a copy instead of Save As?
How do I turn off Save as copy in Word?
How do I change from Save a copy to save as?
Why is Word not letting me save my work?
When you save as does it make a copy?
How do I save multiple copies of a Word document?

The Save As feature in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint has been replaced by Save a Copy. To save a copy of a file, do the following:

Tap File > Save a Copy.
Choose where you want to save the file.
Enter a file name and then tap Save a Copy.

Important: The Office apps automatically save as you work. To avoid overwriting your original file, save a copy before you start making changes.

Save a new file

To save a newly created file, do the following:

Tap File > Name.
In the list of locations on the left side of the screen, choose the cloud service of your choice.
Enter a file name and tap Save.

Need more help?

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated November 6, 2021)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365

Jim often uses Word's "Save a Copy" command to convert a document to a PDF. There are 16 choices in Save a Copy, including one to save in Word 97 format. Jim wonders if there is a way to remove the file formats that he'll never use.

The contents of the dialog box seem to be hard-coded, with no way to adjust what is displayed. You can, however, use a macro-based approach to adjust how the Save a Copy commend works.

First, however, it helps to understand a bit about the Save a Copy command. It is easy to think that the command is the same as the Save As command, and it is—to a degree. Interestingly, if you click on the File tab of the ribbon, you'll see only two save-related commands displayed: Save and Save As. However, if you customize the ribbon or the Quick Access Toolbar, there are a plethora of save-related commands that can be added, including Save a Copy.

If you add the Save a Copy command to your ribbon or QAT, it acts very much like simply clicking on Save As; both commands display the same Save As dialog box. However, the two commands call different macro code in order to execute. You can verify this by adding the following code to your Normal template:

Sub FileSaveACopy()
    With Dialogs(wdDialogFileSaveAs)
        .Format = wdFormatPDF
        .Show
    End With
End Sub

With this macro in place, clicking on the Save a Copy tool displays the Save As dialog box, which it normally does, but it has the PDF format automatically chosen in the dialog box. If you, instead, choose the Save As command (or simply press F12), then the same Save As dialog box is displayed, but the PDF format is not chosen as the default.

The upshot is that if you want the Save a Copy command (and only that command) to use the PDF format as its default, then using the above macro will work just fine. If you want, however, both Save a Copy and Save As to use PDF as the default, you will need two macros—the one above and the following variation:

Sub FileSaveAs()
    With Dialogs(wdDialogFileSaveAs)
        .Format = wdFormatPDF
        .Show
    End With
End Sub

The only difference in this variation is the name of the macro itself.

I should also note that Microsoft, in its typical fashion, has muddied the waters even more. If you are using Word as an app on a tablet or your phone, there is not a "Save As" command available from the File tab of the ribbon. Instead, displaying the File tab indicates that there is a Save and a Save a Copy command—in other words, "Save As" has been replaced with "Save a Copy" in the app. It is unclear, however, whether this is simply a wording change, or whether the underlying code calls the SaveAs command or the SaveACopy command.

There is another approach that you can follow that may be easier—you could create the entire PDF using a macro. The following short macro converts the document to a PDF file and saves it in the same folder as the Word document. (This means that you should only run this macro on a document that has been previously saved.)

Sub SavePDFCopy()
    Dim sName As String

    With ActiveDocument
        sName = .Path & "\" & .Name
        sName = Left(sName, InStr(sName, ".") - 1) & ".pdf"
    End With
    ActiveDocument.ExportAsFixedFormat OutputFileName:=sName, _
      ExportFormat:=wdExportFormatPDF
End Sub

If the macro is placed on the QAT or the ribbon, then there is only one click needed to convert the current document to PDF and save the result.

If you would like to know how to use the macros described on this page (or on any other page on the WordTips sites), I've prepared a special page that includes helpful information. Click here to open that special page in a new browser tab.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (10125) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365.

Author Bio

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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Why Does Word have save a copy instead of Save As?

Editors use the "Save a Copy" or "Save As" commands mainly to create incremental versions (back up copies) of their projects. "Save a Copy" seems to make the most sense for today's workflows. Save A Copy: saves the document under a new name, but the original stays open for editing, not the new one.

How do I turn off Save as copy in Word?

In the Options window, select Save from the left navigation. Uncheck Autosave OneDrive and SharePoint Online files by default. Going forward, your documents will default to Autosave off. You will need turn this setting off in every Office 365 program you don't want Autosave turned on.

How do I change from Save a copy to save as?

The Save As feature in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint has been replaced by Save a Copy. To save a copy of a file, do the following: Tap File > Save a Copy. Choose where you want to save the file.

Why is Word not letting me save my work?

If you've turned on AutoSave, turn it off. If you've used Track Changes, then turn it off and resolve all the changes in the document. Then use Save As to save out the document under a new file name. If you still can't save your edited document, then there is a good chance that the document is corrupted in some way.

When you save as does it make a copy?

After that, you can click the Save command to save it with the same name and location. Save As: You'll use this command to create a copy of a document while keeping the original.

How do I save multiple copies of a Word document?

How do I make multiple copies of a Word document? To make multiple copies of a Word document, you can choose the Copy and Paste feature of Windows. Then copy it and paste for several versions. Or you can choose to try the Save as feature.