Ingantt Help

Saving Your Project #

Ingantt saves your project either as a file on your device or as a file in your Google Drive. Autosave then keeps that file up to date while you work. This article explains which destination you get, when autosave applies, and the one case where it cannot.

Saving for the first time #

Click the Save button in the toolbar, or use Save file in the File menu.

If the project has never been saved, Ingantt asks where it should go. Save project as offers two destinations:

You can change the destination later with Save file as in the File menu, which always creates a new file and continues working in it.

Your project is saved in an XML format that is fully compatible with Microsoft Project. Nothing about your plan is locked to Ingantt.

On the web, if you are already signed in to Google when you create a project, Ingantt picks Google Drive for you and names the file after the project. You do not have to save once before autosave starts working, and renaming the project renames the Drive file.

Autosave #

When autosave is on, Ingantt writes every change to the project's existing file in the background, roughly every 20 seconds, and only when there is something unsaved. It always writes to the destination the project already has — it never picks a new one.

Whether it is on by default depends on the platform:

Platform Autosave by default Where to change it
Web On File menu → Work offline (no autosave)
Android, iOS, Windows, macOS Off Enable autosave in the Options dialog, or in the File menu

The Save button doubles as the autosave indicator. It shows Saving…, File saved, File saved to Google Drive, Autosave pending…, or an error if a save did not go through.

Autosave cannot help in two situations:

Autosave and local files on the web #

A browser cannot write back to a file you picked from your disk. When Ingantt for Web saves to "a local file" it downloads a new copy of the file instead — which is the right behaviour for an explicit Save, but not something you want happening every 20 seconds.

So: Ingantt for Web does not autosave to local files. If you opened a local project file in the browser and want your changes kept automatically, use Save file as → Save to new Google Drive file once. From then on, autosave keeps the Drive file current.

This affects Edit with AI in the same way: with no autosave, anything the AI changes stays unsaved until you save it yourself, and Ingantt warns you about that before the session starts.

Working offline on the web #

Work offline (no autosave) in the File menu turns autosave off for the current browser tab. Use it when you want to keep editing without every change going to Google Drive.

Two things to know about it:

Downloading a copy #

On the web, File → Download → Download XML saves a copy of the project to your computer without changing where the project itself is saved. Use it for a backup, or to hand the file to someone using Microsoft Project.

Other formats — PDF, PNG, CSV, XML, YAML, and Markdown — are covered in Import & Export.

Closing with unsaved changes #

If you close a project that has unsaved changes, Ingantt asks Save changes to your project and warns that unsaved changes will be lost. The same prompt appears before moving a project to the Trash.

If Ingantt will not let you save #