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.

I was able to resolve this issue on my computer with windows 10 & O365. I did a Online quick repair but that didn't seem to fix it. Then i deleted the files in "C:\Users\userName\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel" Then my test files and all of my other files started creating files in that directory every minute like they should have. The "Keep the last AutoRecovered version if I close without saving" didn't start working until I did this as well. good luck Anyone know what this fix would look like for a Mac? Not sure where in the Library folder this would be, assuming it is in there. Thanks.

I also lost hours of work, video card driver crashed Windows and subsequently Crashed Excel book. Disable auto recover not checked, interval was at 10 minutes. And Excel never backed it up. Microsoft needs to get their act together, garbage reliability of their products.

Just read the thread. Lost 4 hours of work on Excel due to a power failure. Autosave is set correctly and NOT disabled. Checking the saved location, it is clearly not working. I understand that I should save as I go along - but power failures are really rare and Auto save is there to stop this from happening. Come on Microsoft - you can do better than this. WHAT is going on? I am using office 365 but working locally.

Just lost half a days work. Auto recovery is on with 5 minute interval, excel just closed itself in the middle of my work without asking if I wanted to save. baffled me not to find the recovery file in the folder that excel uses to store auto recovery files. I can't really figure out how or why this happened but I find an auto recovery function that does not save a recovery file quite a mistake. Seeing that many of you have signalled this error several months ago makes me wonder why this has not been taken care of yet.

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

2018-08-14T16:43:14+00:00

I was able to resolve this issue on my computer with windows 10 & O365. I did a Online quick repair but that didn't seem to fix it.

Then i deleted the files in "C:\Users\userName\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel"

Then my test files and all of my other files started creating files in that directory every minute like they should have. The "Keep the last AutoRecovered version if I close without saving" didn't start working until I did this as well.

good luck

Anyone know what this fix would look like for a Mac? Not sure where in the Library folder this would be, assuming it is in there. Thanks.
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Anonymous

2018-08-08T18:25:20+00:00

I also lost hours of work, video card driver crashed Windows and subsequently Crashed Excel book.

Disable auto recover not checked, interval was at 10 minutes. And Excel never backed it up. Microsoft needs to get their act together, garbage reliability of their products.
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Anonymous

2018-07-30T11:10:35+00:00

Just read the thread. Lost 4 hours of work on Excel due to a power failure. Autosave is set correctly and NOT disabled. Checking the saved location, it is clearly not working. I understand that I should save as I go along - but power failures are really rare and Auto save is there to stop this from happening.

Come on Microsoft - you can do better than this. WHAT is going on? I am using office 365 but working locally.
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Anonymous

2018-07-22T23:43:50+00:00

Just lost half a days work.

Auto recovery is on with 5 minute interval, excel just closed itself in the middle of my work without asking if I wanted to save.

baffled me not to find the recovery file in the folder that excel uses to store auto recovery files.

I can't really figure out how or why this happened but I find an auto recovery function that does not save a recovery file quite a mistake.

Seeing that many of you have signalled this error several months ago makes me wonder why this has not been taken care of yet.
Was this answer helpful?

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