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.

More than a year later, and the problem persist... This issue just hit me. 5 days of work gone even though I did manually save at the end of each day before turning computer off. All new work was there each morning except this morning. Everything gone except the original save. Saved the file to a memory stick and everything except the original save is gone as well. All settings are correct per Microsoft instructions. Scan shows no corruption in the file. Computer virus scan is clean. Microsoft may have a bigger issue than the one they are ignoring.

More than a year later, and the problem persist...

Replying to bump this bug up again since microsoft seems to be ignoring this issue. I have my AutoSave set to 1min. I worked for 1.5+ hours and not a single autosave was created. Save location for recovery documents is my local host. Lost all the work when I tried to save and our network crashed during the operation. Fix your program

Hi Martin, Please take note that AutoRecovery only functions during unexpected failure or if a file was closed without saving it. If you have accidentally deleted the file, you might want to check the recycle bin of your computer since AutoRecovery won't apply to accidentally deleted files. Just to make sure that your AutoRecover and AutoSave functions are setup properly. Please check Use AutoSave and AutoRecover to recover your files in case of a system crash. To ensure that your files will be auto-recovered during crashes, kindly set it up accordingly to the number of work time you used. Please check the Tips topic to know this. You may also use the Document Recovery Tool in Windows. Follow the steps in the article to do so. You may also try to update your Excel program. To get the update, open Excel and choose File > Account > Update Options > Update Now . Let us know what happens after doing the above mentioned troubleshooting steps. I have done all the aforementioned steps and the issue is not resolved " AutoRecovery only functions during unexpected failure ..." I am pretty sure that everyone commenting on this thread experienced unexpected failure, otherwise if the failure were expected they would have saved their work manually. Furthermore, it clearly DOESN'T function during unexpected failures considering the number of replies dating back almost a year. This is a bug with YOUR software, not PEBKAC. Please address accordingly. These failures of a very basic feature are costing various companies thousands to millions of dollars in lost time & information.

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

2018-11-08T19:22:20+00:00

More than a year later, and the problem persist...

This issue just hit me. 5 days of work gone even though I did manually save at the end of each day before turning computer off. All new work was there each morning except this morning. Everything gone except the original save. Saved the file to a memory stick and everything except the original save is gone as well. All settings are correct per Microsoft instructions. Scan shows no corruption in the file. Computer virus scan is clean. Microsoft may have a bigger issue than the one they are ignoring.
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Anonymous

2018-11-08T09:04:20+00:00

More than a year later, and the problem persist...
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Anonymous

2018-10-17T18:11:30+00:00

Replying to bump this bug up again since microsoft seems to be ignoring this issue.

I have my AutoSave set to 1min. I worked for 1.5+ hours and not a single autosave was created. Save location for recovery documents is my local host. Lost all the work when I tried to save and our network crashed during the operation.

Fix your program
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Anonymous

2018-08-29T18:13:47+00:00

Hi Martin,

Please take note that AutoRecovery only functions during unexpected failure or if a file was closed without saving it. If you have accidentally deleted the file, you might want to check the recycle bin of your computer since AutoRecovery won't apply to accidentally deleted files.

Just to make sure that your AutoRecover and AutoSave functions are setup properly. Please check Use AutoSave and AutoRecover to recover your files in case of a system crash. To ensure that your files will be auto-recovered during crashes, kindly set it up accordingly to the number of work time you used. Please check the Tips topic to know this.

You may also use the Document Recovery Tool in Windows. Follow the steps in the article to do so.

You may also try to update your Excel program. To get the update, open Excel and choose File > Account > Update Options > Update Now.

Let us know what happens after doing the above mentioned troubleshooting steps.

I have done all the aforementioned steps and the issue is not resolved

"AutoRecovery only functions during unexpected failure ..." I am pretty sure that everyone commenting on this thread experienced unexpected failure, otherwise if the failure were expected they would have saved their work manually. Furthermore, it clearly DOESN'T function during unexpected failures considering the number of replies dating back almost a year.

This is a bug with YOUR software, not PEBKAC. Please address accordingly. These failures of a very basic feature are costing various companies thousands to millions of dollars in lost time & information.
Was this answer helpful?

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