ANY-maze Help > The ANY-maze reference > The File page > Saving experiments

Saving experiments

Overview

Saving an experiment in ANY-maze is as simple as switching to the File page and selecting Save experiment or Save experiment as from the menu on the left.

If the file has been saved before, then selecting will immediately save the experiment - this is usually so fast that it may not be too obvious that it has happened.

There's also a shortcut method for saving an experiment; you can simply click the button in the top left of the ANY-maze window title bar. You can do this at any time, even when a test is running.

When you Save as, the original experiment is not itself saved, so any changes you have made to that file since you opened (or last saved) it will only appear in the file you save to; also the file you saved to will be the file that is now open (i.e. the file you are working on). For example, imagine you open an experiment called 'Experiment A' which includes one performed test (Test 1). You then perform Test 2 and then save the experiment as 'Experiment B'. 'Experiment A' will continue to ONLY contain Test 1, while 'Experiment B' will contain both Test 1 and Test 2 and you will now be working on 'Experiment B'.

ANY-maze includes other facilities related to saving experiments, and these are described in the sections below:

Saving experiments without ANY-maze asking for confirmation

Whenever you close an experiment, ANY-maze will check whether it contains any changes which haven't yet been saved and if it does, it'll ask you whether you'd like to save them - probably you'll almost always reply Yes. For this reason, you can use the Filing options to tell ANY-maze to always save changes without asking you - thus avoiding this question which can otherwise become a bit irritating.

Using this facility does mean that it's harder to cancel changes to a file if you don't want to save them. For example, imagine you opened an experiment and added 10 animals to it. You then noticed that you'd opened the wrong file. If you simply close the file, ANY-maze will save your changes automatically (here we're assuming you are using the option to save changes without asking for confirmation). To avoid this you should select the File page option to Revert to saved experiment - this will simply discard the changes you've made.

Backing up experiment files

We've all been told a thousand times how important it is that we keep backups of our files - but let's be honest, most of us don't, or if we do, we make backups less frequently than we should.

ANY-maze includes a simple option which, while by no means representing a full backup facility, does at least add a little extra protection. Essentially, the system can retain the previous version of an experiment file as a backup each time you save a new version.

If you want to use this facility, then you should switch it on in the Filing options - it's entirely transparent but, of course, you'll find you use more disk space because you'll be keeping multiple copies of each experiment file. You can see a list of an experiment's backup files by viewing the Experiment information.

By the way, backup files are given the extension .szk and you can open them by using File page > Open experiment > Browse computer and then changing the Type of file in the 'Open file' window to ANY-maze backup files.

Protecting experiment files with a password

If you work in a lab where lots of people have access to the ANY-maze computer, you may wish to protect your experiment files using a password.

To do this is very easy - at the bottom of the Save experiment window is a field titled Password where you simply need to make an entry in order to protect the file. When you, or someone else, tries to open the file, the File password window will open and they'll need to enter the password in order to access the file.

In fact, if you expect you'll usually use this facility, then you can tell ANY-maze to automatically protect all your files using your ANY-maze password*. This has two benefits - you won't need to enter a password each time you save a file and, provided you're logged on, ANY-maze will open your files without asking you for the password as you had to provide it to log-on in the first place.

If you want to use this facility, you should check the box titled Protect my files by default... which is shown in Options > My account.

It's important to understand that protecting a file in this way will prevent other people from opening it, but it won't prevent them from using Windows to move it, copy it, delete it, etc. - to prevent that, you should protect the file using Windows' native security options.

*This facility is only available if you're using ANY-maze to manage its own users - see An introduction to managing users for more information.

Recovering files in the event of a crash

Unlike most computer programs which only save your work when you explicitly select a 'Save' option, ANY-maze saves everything you do as you do it. This means that your work is always secure - even if there's a power-cut.

This isn't like the 'auto-save' option in Microsoft Word, which saves your work at set time intervals; in ANY-maze, everything is saved as you do it. There's just one exception to this rule - test results are only saved at the end of a test.

Of course you might wonder why, if ANY-maze saves everything all the time, it still has a 'Save' option at all. The answer is that ANY-maze saves your work to a temporary file, and it only makes this temporary file permanent when you 'save' it. This means that you can still abandon changes by simply not 'saving' an experiment.

So what happens if disaster strikes? Well, if your computer goes wrong (a crash) or there's a power-cut, then ANY-maze will exit without removing the temporary file in which it saves your actions. As a result, next time you start ANY-maze it will find the temporary file and ask you if you'd like to recover the data it contains - see figure 2. In general, you should answer YES - ANY-maze will then recover all the data and you can continue working as if the crash, power-cut or whatever had never occurred. By the way, if you answer NO, ANY-maze will delete the temporary file and your experiment file will be left in the same state as it was on the last occasion you explicitly saved it.

Figure 2. If your computer crashes, ANY-maze will detect a temporary experiment file when it restarts. Recovering the data in the file will recover everything you did between the last time you saved and the time the computer crashed.

Temporary files are user-specific. This means that to recover a file, you must log back on using the same user account as you were using when the computer crashed.

See also:

© Copyright 2003-2026 Stoelting Co. All rights reserved

ANY-maze help topic T0064