Autosave/backups in Office for Mac 2016 Preview

Here's an update on AutoRecover in Office 2016.

It actually is working if you have the option to "Save AutoRecover info" turned on as shown in my previous post. The location it saves to is: 

~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Word/Data/Library/Preferences/AutoRecovery/

Unfortunately, it's not easy to find and search will not display any files in that folder but it is saving to that location, so you have to know the path.

The other unfortunate thing for you personally regarding this specific issue, is that as soon as the open file closes, the AutoRecovery document, which was the last current snapshot of the full file you were working on at the time when the AutoRecovery version was made, is deleted. Said another way, the AutoRecovery file snapshots are temporary and are only retained if Word terminates abnormally. If Word thinks everything is "hunky dory" when it closes the file, then the AutoRecovery file is immediately deleted.

There are two types of file recovery/backup saving that Word performs.

The first is labeled AutoRecovery and it builds a temporary file based on a time frame that you control. This "recovery" file is automatically available to you if the system crashes. If the system does not crash and you close out of the document, the file is not retained. Unless you change where these AutoRecovery files are stored, which I suggest you do from Word > Preferences > File Locations..., the auto recovery file are very hard to access. The very important thing to remember about an AutoRecovery generated file is that it is temporary and the function has been shown to be rather unreliable.

The second I would call file overwrite protection and it stores the previous version of the file. Its value are for those moments when you accidentally save over a file that you shouldn't have. In Word, you turn this feature on from Word > Preferences > Save and then mark the "Always create a backup" check box. The way this function works is it is triggered by you clicking save, and before it overwrites the stored version of the file, a backup version is made... so with it turned on, you at least have one prior version of your file.

GUB is a 3rd party add-in product that replaces the "overwrite protection" function of Word. GUB does not change or enhance any of the AutoRecovery features of Word.

Because GUB is a 3rd party add-in product, it is not appropriate to try and diagnose on this forum why its Tab is not showing on your ribbon. Support for GUB is available from its website. However with that said, all add-ins to Word have to be "enabled" so you should check Tools > Templates & Add-ins and ensure it is marked. You also may need to quit Word completely and restart, before any add-in automatically enables. And finally, add-ins to Word 2016 require that you are running the currently released 15.22.1 version or higher of the Office 2016 for the Mac software.

Hope this helps