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
    2016-07-05T20:03:48+00:00

    Thank you so much!!! This seriously saved my life!

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-12-15T18:27:35+00:00

    PowerPoint updated on my MAC, and the work I'd done 3 days ago was all gone.    Seems to me that the version change caused PP to throw away the autosaved file.

    Based on the above, I managed to find the empty file, using a Shell,  Finder wasn't letting me even see ~/Library.  But it was empty.

    I then restored using Time Machine from up before the upgrade, but I had to restore my whole account to a new location, because Time Machine was not even showing me Library, either.  

    I then did a copy/rename of the one file, and got my presentation back.

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