Bottom save button does nothing and no auto save instructions

I created a simple view that listed taxonomy terms titles and a single text field and made this editable. The resulting page did allow me to update the field (a big win - thanks) but unless I click every save button as I go along the large save button at the bottom seems to do nothing and returns the page to the previous values. also i cant work out how to turn on/enable auto save (which would be the other way of doing things