I have been a buyer on EBay for years, but only joined the selling side a few weeks ago. I immediately found that listing directly with EBay was not the way to go. I found Auctiva and went that route because I like the way it looked and because of the free images. BUT I also found out rather quickly that Auctiva has it's draw back. Not the least of which is the TIMING OUT problem. After losing a lot work, even after saving as you did I went looking for alternatives. I downloaded TURBO LISTER. Although it's not the end all to everything, it at least allows me to actually create and edit the listing on MY COMPUTER and BEFORE I post to EBay. It automatically updates and post to Auctiva. It will show on the listing page of Auctiva as an imported listing and will not list on that page the hits, etc., but you do away with the timing out issue. I personally don't rely on Auctiva for data or tracking. Their listing management page has a serious lag time for updating bidding.
In any case, I'm looking at some other options, but for now Turbo Lister is simple and seems to work pretty well.
Hope this helps.
Lillian