where are the auto saved files for office 2016 for mac?

Anonymous
2015-03-10T02:57:37+00:00

I had autorecoveron (by default) and the app crashed (ironically when i tried to do a normal save). is there a chance i can get my file back and if so where?

this was a powerpoint presentation.

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Microsoft 365 and Office | PowerPoint | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2015-03-10T09:20:15+00:00

thanks for your reply.

I actually found my file - for reference it was at 

HD > Users > [my user name] > Library > Containers > com.microsoft.Powerpoint > Data > Library > Preferences > AutoRecovery > Presentation1_autorecover

but powerpoint wouldn't detect it upon restart, it wouldn't show up in spotlight etc. (I found it with a program called "find my file")

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Anonymous
2015-09-23T20:41:09+00:00

I had to rename the autosave file with a '.pptm' extension before PowerPoint would open it.

It appears the autosave has a content type of "application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.presentation.macroEnabled.main+xml" instead of "application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.presentation.main+xml" which is typical for a pptx file.

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Anonymous
2015-03-13T22:04:01+00:00

I guess there's confusion over what type of file you were working on. If it was a Word document then everything in the path is the same except replace the word "PowerPoint" for "Word" and see if anything is in that folder.

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-02-03T17:29:29+00:00

    thanks for your reply.

    I actually found my file - for reference it was at 

    HD > Users > [my user name] > Library > Containers > com.microsoft.Powerpoint > Data > Library > Preferences > AutoRecovery > Presentation1_autorecover

    but powerpoint wouldn't detect it upon restart, it wouldn't show up in spotlight etc. (I found it with a program called "find my file")

    Bless you!  Had this crash about 5 times tonight.  This time I lost 2 hours of work.  Found the file - had to force it to open with ppt application, but it's THERE!  woo hoo.  so grateful!

    Laura, you just saved my life!!!!! 3 hours of work restored. Thank you!!!

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-01-22T11:52:55+00:00

    So I've picked up a bad habit of just relying on the default setting of ms office saving everything every 10 min. i opened a ms word and it opened to an autosaved unsaved document (a para i pulled from an article). I then spent the last few hours writing a term paper to completion. While i was resizing images and making it pretty ms crashed. I found where the file should be but all that was there was an auto recovered file which was just what i started with. Please advise if there's anything i can do. I'm about to start all over.

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