Autosave not working - no files are there

Probably a little late for many, but I just wanted to pass this along. It might be helpful to someone.

First, for Nicklas L, XLB files are Excel’s backup/AutoRecover workbooks. For more recent versions, XLSB is the extension.

Word saves its AutoRecover files as ASD, regardless of version, I think.

BUT--I think you have to access them through File | Open | Recover Unsaved Documents in the corresponding app.

On my system, Word and Excel 2013, when I click on File | Open | Recover Unsaved Documents, nothing is there. Both Word and Excel go to this folder if I click on Recover Unsaved Documents …

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Office\UnsavedFiles\

… but there are no unsaved documents there. (This is in the application data Local folder.)

But if I click on Recover Unsaved Documents in Word and then manually navigate to this folder …

%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Word\

… that is actually where they are, each one in its own folder with cryptic names. (This is in the application data Roaming folder.) I can then find and open both unsaved and autosaved documents. I just have to figure out the names, which is not that hard.

Likewise, if I click on Recover Unsaved Documents in Excel and then manually navigate to the following folder, I can then find and open the unsaved and autosaved workbooks …

%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Excel\

… though they're also in folders with cryptic names.

To see what would happen, I tried changing the AutoRecover file location option in Word to a different folder. However, Word continued to save AutoRecover documents in %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Word. To be fair, Word also saved an AutoRecover copy in the new location, but as soon as Word closed normally, it disappeared. (If Word crashed, it remained.) So using a different location doesn’t seem worthwhile.

I tried changing the AutoRecover file location option in Excel to a folder I created, but it didn’t make any difference. Excel continued to save AutoRecover files in %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Excel\ and put nothing in the new location.

I agree that this doesn't really appear to be a very good design. I get the impression that this is a transitional process that (I hope) someday will work the way it is supposed to.

On another subtopic, when I tested the timing in Word, with the interval set at 3 minutes, it consistently saved after 5 minutes, which is not very friendly of it.

Thanks vkrlc!  I've now found that some files are automatically being saved, in the location you indicated.  Which, of course, is not where they're supposed to be saved.  Mine is set to autosave every 4 minutes, but it looks like it's doing it every 11-12 minutes.  One of the Excel files I've had open for a while has not been autosaved, but then I haven't changed it either, so perhaps that makes a difference.

I have noticed, that if you don't have a trailing slash () for the AutoRecover file location, Excel 2013 will not create any AutoRecovery files.  

File Tab -> Options -> Save -> with 'Save AutoRecover Information every' X minutes turned, on, the value in 'AutoRecover file location' must be valid with a trailing slash. 

E.g. "D:\Data\AutoBackups\Excel" doesn't work and the dialog doesn't complain when you click OK. No files are ever written there. 

Change it to "D:\Data\AutoBackups\Excel" and Excel starts to create files there 10 minutes after open a file (provided you change something).

I have noticed, that if you don't have a trailing slash () for the AutoRecover file location, Excel 2013 will not create any AutoRecovery files.  

File Tab -> Options -> Save -> with 'Save AutoRecover Information every' X minutes turned, on, the value in 'AutoRecover file location' must be valid with a trailing slash. 

E.g. "D:\Data\AutoBackups\Excel" doesn't work and the dialog doesn't complain when you click OK. No files are ever written there. 

Change it to "D:\Data\AutoBackups\Excel" and Excel starts to create files there 10 minutes after open a file (provided you change something). 

I'm beginning to think that Microsoft has changed the behavior of Word and Excel since I first posted on Oct. 27. Either that, or I was seriously mistaken about what they were doing.

For example, I noticed that Word now forces a slash () at the end of the "AutoRecover file location." If I remove the slash and click "OK," then open the options again, the slash is back. (Excel does not do this--if you remove the slash, it stays gone.)

I am also finding autosave documents in the "AutoRecover file location" in both Word and Excel. I can change the location option in both apps, and the autosave documents now appear there. If the app crashes (or is terminated), the autosave document remains there and is displayed as a recovery option when the app is next opened.

Meanwhile, Word and Excel are now putting copies of the autosave documents in the "UnsavedFiles" folder if I close normally without saving them. They weren't doing that before, so they are now behaving more reasonably. (This is the %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Office\UnsavedFiles
folder, and there does not appear to be an option to change it.)

Back to Excel, it seems to be working correctly now even without the slash, though I think you're right that it was not working until recently. Thanks for the note.

I thought it might be useful to say what version I'm using: Word is 15.0.4971.1002 and Excel is 15.0.4971.1000. The MSO version for both is 15.0.4971.1000.

I've had the exact same issue with some college work: I went to sleep at 4am after working on a document for 7 hours straight, only to find that it had reverted itself to a version from the day before with zero evidence that i had as much as opened the file.

I found this out half an hour before the work was due in, so as you can imagine I got in a right state.

I must say, as with many of the applications I use from microsoft, issues exist, the autosave problem being one of them

Autosave?? what autosave???

I find it unbelievable that a company of Microsoft size cannot produce a simple "autosave" function that works....I have spent may hours trawling other computers to help employees to recover work that they wrongly thought was being "Autosaved".

Microsoft...hang your head in shame.