Edit a resume
How the ATSReady desktop resume editor is structured, where Save lives, and what changes move to preview, template, market, and export.
On this page
Use the desktop resume editor when you need full section-by-section editing. Nothing you change there is stored until you save it.
What is on the screen
The desktop resume workspace combines:
- a section rail,
- a form column for the selected section,
- and a live rendered preview.
Two separate control groups sit above them, and it matters which is which.
The toolbar above the preview owns template selection, market and language settings, preview zoom, and export. It also shows an export-language picker when the resume has translated variants, and a keyword-highlighting toggle when the resume is linked to a job that has a description — on a Base resume, or on a resume whose linked job has no description text, that toggle is not rendered at all.
Undo, redo, and Save are not in that toolbar. They sit in the page header. Their keystrokes are on Keyboard shortcuts.
How to edit
- Open the section you want from the rail.
- Change the fields in the form column.
- Review the live preview.
- Switch template or market settings if the presentation needs to change.
- Save. ATSReady does not autosave a resume. Until you save, every change lives only in the open page.
- Export when the document is ready.
Why Save is a real step
There is no autosave anywhere in the resume editor, and no timed write in the background. The Save button carries a marker while the document has unsaved changes, and that marker is the whole of the warning you get while you are working.
Two guards sit behind that marker, and there is a gap between them. Navigating away inside ATSReady with unsaved changes raises a question first, with Stay as the safe answer. Closing or reloading the tab raises the browser's own confirmation instead. Neither one covers the browser's Back and Forward buttons, which a page cannot cancel — pressing Back with unsaved changes loses them without asking.
Export does not save. Exporting a document with unsaved changes gives you a correct file and leaves the stored resume unchanged, which is the one way to end up with a good PDF and none of the edits behind it.
What changes on smaller or locked surfaces
Below 1024 px the resume route falls back to a preview-first surface. That is a width rule rather than a device rule, so a portrait tablet lands there too.
A tailored resume also becomes read-only when its linked job is no longer in the first column of the board, at any width.
On both of those surfaces the header actions are absent: there is no Save, no undo, and no redo. The template control in the toolbar is still live, so a template change made there can mark the document as having unsaved changes with no control on screen able to store them.