Back in college, there were plenty of excuses for not submitting homework on time:

“The neighbor’s dog ate it.”

“My drunk dad had the munchies and ate it.”

“Some bro tased me while I was out protesting, and I couldn’t do it.”

Unfortunately, once you took off the university sweatshirt for a coat and tie, these same excuses are no longer viable. Unless your alcoholic father still has a taste for paper, or you’re a card-carrying member of the Occupy movement, there’s no way you could weasel yourself out of not finishing that 50-page report on time.

But by far the worse part is if you actually DID do the report, but managed to lose it somehow. And in the modern age, there are plenty of culprits for these besides the dog: the blue screen of death, a sudden power outage, even a computer virus.

So how can avoid losing the work that you spent six hours hunched over? Easy, you just need to spend a few minutes to familiarize yourself with Word or office applications you use. After that, it will be as automatic as your office email backup.

Save frequently

You might have spent half the night crunching that 300-page cost-benefit analysis. But remember that until you print it out, it’s just a collection of 1′s and 0′s inside a processor’s microchip.

Here’s a pro tip: save. And save frequently.

Make this a habit. The minute you start working on a report, hit F12. That’s the shortcut key for “Save as”. Once you’ve done that, just tap Shift + F12 every time you pause or take a break.

Enable auto-save

So that you don’t have to tap the same keys each time you take a breath (or every 5 seconds, if you happen to be obsessive compulsive), you can enable Microsoft Office to auto-save your work.

Here’s how.

1. On the toolbar, click on “Tools.” Then in the drop-down menu, choose “Options.”

2. In the Options panel, check the box beside “Save autorecover info every”.

3. At the right side of the AutoRecover box, you can set how often you want your work to be saved, in minutes.

4. Click “OK.” The application will now auto-save your document during the intervals you set. In case of a power outage or computer crash, the document will still be saved.

Remember however, that it’s still necessary to manually save your document each time you close the application. The auto-save feature only saves during the set intervals, not when you close the window.

So there you have it. Just by spending a few minutes tweaking these options, you never have to smash your head against the wall again every time Windows 7 crashes on you.