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
    2015-10-27T02:37:01+00:00

    Another place to check is the directory specified by the TMPDIR environmental variable. You can go to this directory by going in to a terminal window and typing       open  $TMPDIR . Apparently auto save files can be saved there as well.

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-10-26T22:24:50+00:00

    Thanks for the response Rich,

    My problem was with a Word document only. Actually I was able to copy paste the "blank" text into another word document and it displayed properly. Unfortunately it was an old auto save so it seems the work was lost after all. I've already redone the work so it's too late now. It was crashing even more frequently today but there was an update that seemed to mitigate it. Although, the issue did happen when I was using a lot of memory (multiple internet tabs, origin, word all running). When I tried to copy paste the second time it crashed on the spot.

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