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

Anonymous
2017-10-19T19:57:03+00:00

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:

  1. Document Recovery seems to be working for Word and PP.
  2. The settings in Options>Save are all the same for all Office products: currently set to AutoRecover every 1 minute.
  3. 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.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2019-01-29T16:59:09+00:00

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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  1. Anonymous
    2018-03-20T11:22:02+00:00

    How can you possibly lose 2 days of work? Do you not hit the save button in 2 days??? I dont think autosave is the issue here.  Btw my last post i asked a simple question — did you turn in show hidden operating system files and what was the name of the file the system created. I work in the IT field and 99% of the posts here are just people whining without really providing any technical details. Call microsoft and open a case if you are really feeling strongly about this. I did and it turned out I was wrong and the behavior I was seeing.

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-03-15T20:44:36+00:00

    Right, and that's BS. Cloud backup should be an option, not a requirement. The implementation has fouled up local backup somehow. 

    This thing's getting daily responses and not a word from MS even in acknowledgement. This is core functionality by any measure. Do we need New York Times to look into this?

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-12-16T13:27:50+00:00

    Hi there,

    Just to add that I have the same problem.  Just lost a days worth of work on a manuscript when autorecover would have helped a lot. 

    Am on a Microsoft Surface Pro with Word 2016.

    --Martin

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  4. Anonymous
    2017-10-19T23:52:55+00:00

    Hello,

    AutoRecover helps protect files in case of a crash. If you reopen the file after a crash, a version of the file with your latest changes appears in a Document Recovery pane. We still suggest that you save manually in order for the feature to begin working. If you neglect to save again within the specified time frame, an AutoRecovery file is created & it is updated on the same basis. It's still recommended that you periodically save your work (a simple Command+S when needed is all it takes).

    The amount of new information that the recovered file contains depends on how frequently a Microsoft Office program saves the recovery file. For example, if the recovery file is saved only every 15 minutes, your recovered file won't contain your last 14 minutes of work before the power failure or other problem occurred. To be extra safe, enter a small number in the minutes box, like 5 or 10. That way, you’ll never lose more than 5 or 10 minutes of work. On the other hand, if you want to make Office faster, try entering a larger number in the minutes box, like 20.

    You may try to uninstall and reinstall the Excel application then set again the settings to refresh it.

    1. Click File > Options > Save.
    2. Make sure the Save AutoRecover information every x minutes box is selected.
    3. In Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, make sure the Keep the last autorecovered version if I close without saving box is selected.

    Let us know how it turns out for you.

    Thank you.

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