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Several times when writing long and detailed answers, I am unable to find time to finish it all in one go. I know draft of unfinished answers are saved and if I visit the question again, I can continue working on it. However, I think there should be a separate section where all unfinished drafts are saved so that I don't have to go looking for the question everytime I want to finish a draft.

What do you think?

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    $\begingroup$ This is already an (ancient, open) feature request at mother meta: meta.stackexchange.com/q/73148/263383, meta.stackexchange.com/q/141834/263383 $\endgroup$
    – ACuriousMind Mod
    Feb 1, 2017 at 18:00
  • $\begingroup$ FYI: As a last resort, you can e.g save an unfinished draft in the sandbox. Remember to link or favorite the question for easy later retrieval. Also clear the sandbox again after you're done. $\endgroup$
    – Qmechanic Mod
    Feb 1, 2017 at 18:20
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    $\begingroup$ Alternatively, you could edit in a service like stackedit.io and save to e.g. Google Drive or similar. $\endgroup$
    – Emilio Pisanty
    Feb 1, 2017 at 22:56

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As I understand it the problem is one of book-marking the question rather than having a convenient place to store the answer while it is being worked on.

A practical way of doing this is to post your first draft of an answer and delete it. Then all you need to do find the answer again is to search in the list of deleted answers in your profile. Hopefully this is much shorter than the list of non-deleted answers. When you are finished working on your answer you can undelete it.

This has the advantage that nobody comments on or (down-)votes your answer while it is still a "work in progress".

The disadvantage is that draft answers will be mixed up with those which you have abandoned altogether but cannot place in the trash can.

Alternatively you could mark the question as a favorite, if this is the only reason you use that feature. But this does not have the advantage of the delete feature.

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    $\begingroup$ If I'm not mistaken, the deleted list contains only recently deleted ones (up to some number of days that I don't know off hand) & not all of them. $\endgroup$
    – Kyle Kanos
    Feb 2, 2017 at 12:07
  • $\begingroup$ Judging by my own "recently deleted answers" list, it is at least 60 days. The only deleted answers which I think might be treated differently are those deleted by a moderator. $\endgroup$
    – sammy gerbil
    Feb 2, 2017 at 17:02
  • $\begingroup$ As per this Meta.SE post, only up to 60 days, but apparently one can use deleted:yes in search and find your own deleted answers. $\endgroup$
    – Kyle Kanos
    Feb 2, 2017 at 17:18

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