Document Recovery ( AutoRecover ) is not working for Excel 2016. System: Windows 8.1 64 bit Microsoft Excel 2016 MSO (16.0.8528.2126) 64 bit No fix even after a full Online repair of Office 2016 and, of course, all possible Office Updates. After working for hours on several Excel documents (which had previously been saved with a file name etc.), the power went out in our building. When the power was restored and Excel reopened, I was presented with the expected list of Recovered Documents on the left side. HOWEVER, every single one of these were simply "the Original version" or "the version last saved by user" (something like that). Meaning they did not contain ANY new data that had been entered since the last time I had saved them/reopened them despite the AutoRecover being set to 1 minute. NOTES : Document Recovery seems to be working for Word and PP. The settings in Options>Save are all the same for all Office products: currently set to AutoRecover every 1 minute. The ...AppData>Roaming>Microsoft>Excel folder contains no backup file/folder for new or reopened Excel Documents. Thank goodness, the AutoRecover does seem to be updating the equivalent folder for Word ("AutoRecovery save of DocumentX.asd" files get updated) and PowerPoint (the "pptXXX.tmp" file also updated). Edit: This is obviously some MSOffice Bug. Of the multiple 'test' spreadsheets I've been playing around with to study this, exactly 1 of them seems to actually back up. But absolutely no other ones and none of my previously created sheets ever backup to AutoRecover.

Thank you for your response. Sadly, the first 75% of your reply is generic information on how one might use/need to use the AutoRecover feature and how to set the interval etc. You may have noticed from my question, that I know how to set it and how it SHOULD work.... but it DOES NOT WORK. This leaves only one (maybe 2) questions from what you have suggested. As you have read, I have done a full Online Repair of MS Office 2016. First, are you saying that an uninstall and reinstall would possibly have a different result than the full Online Repair? Second, how do you uninstall and reinstall ONLY Excel as you suggest? Thank you.

This just happened to me as well. For some reason, unmerging a handful of cells triggered an Excel crash, and it turns out that there was no autorecover file (or, it was autodeleted by Excel). I've got all the settings turned on for Autosave, and consider myself an advanced Excel user (I've written enterprise applications in VBA). The same thing happened to one of my coworkers on Friday, when she tried to hide two columns- Excel crashed, and the autorecover files were either never created, or were deleted by Excel when it tried to recover the file(s)- again, recovering the original copy, with none of the changes made over multiple hours of work. At this point, I believe the Autorecover feature is nonfunctional, and hope that MS gets enough complaints that they investigate and identify the root cause I'm using Win7 x64, with Office 2016 x32 on a Dell Latitude E7450 laptop. Autorecover has worked for me in the past, so I'm inclined to blame an MS update (like the one that recently messed up merged cells in Word/Outlook, which I still have to live with until our IT department rolls out the patch MS released for that one)

I am also having this issue. Since the last update of Excel, it does not recover any of my files that are saved on my hard-drive -- the file has been saved and I do some work on it -- Excel crashes and all of my work is gone. If the file is saved on Sharepoint, it is auto-saved every five seconds (it seems) so it doesn't have this issue. Excel is crashing on me multiple times a day, even when running no other programs. Since the update earlier this month (I do the fast updates), I've had multiple issues, but this one in particular is unsettling. Unless I literally save after everything I type, I am guaranteed to lose work, because Excel is crashing so often.

There was no autorecover information file for this, but I went into the Save options, and "Disable AutoRecover for this workbook only" was ticked. I have since checked all my regularly used workbooks, and found a few of them were ticked in this manner. I'm very sure I did not set them that way. Holy Moly!! I have never noticed the option for " Disable AutoRecover "! (and, therefore, I guarantee you that I have never checked that box!) but, sure enough, some of my workbooks have that box checked. I unchecked on one .... and a backup file did appear in the right spot! HOWEVER....like you say... not all of those boxes are checked and AutoRecover Files are not being created. And, again like you say, certainly no AutoRecover files are being created for any of the new Workbooks I'm testing right now either. If you stare at the backup folder long enough, sometimes you see something (like a file name) flash on and off again - but no new AutoRecover file is ever created. (too quick to read it) I wonder if this is showing us something. Good to know that there's probably no point in reinstalling Office (if your experience is representative). OK, Microsoft.... time to fix this. (Meanwhile, thanks for pointing out a box that should never be checked as a default setting!)

Excel 2016 AutoRecover not working - NO files being saved to the AutoRecover File location

Anonymous

Document Recovery (AutoRecover) is not working for Excel 2016.

System:

Windows 8.1 64 bit

Microsoft Excel 2016 MSO (16.0.8528.2126) 64 bit

No fix even after a full Online repair of Office 2016 and, of course, all possible Office Updates.

After working for hours on several Excel documents (which had previously been saved with a file name etc.), the power went out in our building. When the power was restored and Excel reopened, I was presented with the expected list of Recovered Documents on the left side. HOWEVER, every single one of these were simply "the Original version" or "the version last saved by user" (something like that).

Meaning they did not contain ANY new data that had been entered since the last time I had saved them/reopened them despite the AutoRecover being set to 1 minute.

NOTES:

Document Recovery seems to be working for Word and PP.
The settings in Options>Save are all the same for all Office products: currently set to AutoRecover every 1 minute.
The ...AppData>Roaming>Microsoft>Excel folder contains no backup file/folder for new or reopened Excel Documents. Thank goodness, the AutoRecover does seem to be updating the equivalent folder for Word ("AutoRecovery save of DocumentX.asd" files get updated) and PowerPoint (the "pptXXX.tmp" file also updated).

Edit: This is obviously some MSOffice Bug. Of the multiple 'test' spreadsheets I've been playing around with to study this, exactly 1 of them seems to actually back up. But absolutely no other ones and none of my previously created sheets ever backup to AutoRecover.

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous

I finally found the right location of the autorecovery files for Mac users of Excel!

See: this post on this forum

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94 additional answers

Anonymous

2017-10-20T00:01:04+00:00

Thank you for your response.

Sadly, the first 75% of your reply is generic information on how one might use/need to use the AutoRecover feature and how to set the interval etc. You may have noticed from my question, that I know how to set it and how it SHOULD work.... but it DOES NOT WORK.

This leaves only one (maybe 2) questions from what you have suggested. As you have read, I have done a full Online Repair of MS Office 2016. First, are you saying that an uninstall and reinstall would possibly have a different result than the full Online Repair? Second, how do you uninstall and reinstall ONLY Excel as you suggest?

Thank you.
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Anonymous

2017-11-13T13:54:02+00:00

This just happened to me as well. For some reason, unmerging a handful of cells triggered an Excel crash, and it turns out that there was no autorecover file (or, it was autodeleted by Excel). I've got all the settings turned on for Autosave, and consider myself an advanced Excel user (I've written enterprise applications in VBA).

The same thing happened to one of my coworkers on Friday, when she tried to hide two columns- Excel crashed, and the autorecover files were either never created, or were deleted by Excel when it tried to recover the file(s)- again, recovering the original copy, with none of the changes made over multiple hours of work.

At this point, I believe the Autorecover feature is nonfunctional, and hope that MS gets enough complaints that they investigate and identify the root cause

I'm using Win7 x64, with Office 2016 x32 on a Dell Latitude E7450 laptop. Autorecover has worked for me in the past, so I'm inclined to blame an MS update (like the one that recently messed up merged cells in Word/Outlook, which I still have to live with until our IT department rolls out the patch MS released for that one)
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Anonymous

2017-10-23T21:41:52+00:00

I am also having this issue. Since the last update of Excel, it does not recover any of my files that are saved on my hard-drive -- the file has been saved and I do some work on it -- Excel crashes and all of my work is gone. If the file is saved on Sharepoint, it is auto-saved every five seconds (it seems) so it doesn't have this issue.

Excel is crashing on me multiple times a day, even when running no other programs. Since the update earlier this month (I do the fast updates), I've had multiple issues, but this one in particular is unsettling. Unless I literally save after everything I type, I am guaranteed to lose work, because Excel is crashing so often.
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Anonymous

2017-10-24T20:01:25+00:00

There was no autorecover information file for this, but I went into the Save options, and "Disable AutoRecover for this workbook only" was ticked. I have since checked all my regularly used workbooks, and found a few of them were ticked in this manner. I'm very sure I did not set them that way.

Holy Moly!! I have never noticed the option for "Disable AutoRecover"! (and, therefore, I guarantee you that I have never checked that box!) but, sure enough, some of my workbooks have that box checked.

I unchecked on one .... and a backup file did appear in the right spot!

HOWEVER....like you say... not all of those boxes are checked and AutoRecover Files are not being created. And, again like you say, certainly no AutoRecover files are being created for any of the new Workbooks I'm testing right now either. If you stare at the backup folder long enough, sometimes you see something (like a file name) flash on and off again - but no new AutoRecover file is ever created. (too quick to read it) I wonder if this is showing us something.

Good to know that there's probably no point in reinstalling Office (if your experience is representative).

OK, Microsoft.... time to fix this. (Meanwhile, thanks for pointing out a box that should never be checked as a default setting!)
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