I know it's a lot to ask, but is there any way (even with another program, which might be preferable) to make VB6 IDE save the project every X minutes? If this isn't possible, instead is there any way of "accessing" the project's data in memory with another program so that it can be backed up by that program without affecting the user's flow (so they don't even notice it happening, they just know it is going to happen regularly and keep their code safe)?

I think sendmessage might be too intrusive if the user is actively writing a program and if they're running their program (granted it doesn't need saving) the sendmessage might cause unexpected results.

This is part of a larger project I am considering working on, and if it all seems doable there'll be a few more questions coming from me in the near future as I work on it, and the eventual end design will be free for anyone to use and MAYBE open source if people don't give any good reasons for why it shouldn't be...I'm happy with it being open-source myself :-)