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.

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.

Check out Andrew Main's comment from March. It fixed it for me! I still crash obviously, but it keeps my autorecover files now :)

I have auto save on for every 3 minutes, I save my work on a regular basis, as in everytime I get up from my computer, I had been working on 3 different excel spreadsheets at once and had put quite a bit of work in each one of them, when all of a sudden I got a not responding, I hit the wait for it to respond 4 times and it never went to that, finally I closed out assuming that since I have auto save on at worst I would lose a few minutes of work, NOTHING had been saved in the 4 hours I had been working, yes I prob should have saved while in the middle of all the work but I didn't, I do save when I stand up which is why I only lost 4 hours of work not almost 8 but WTF, I have done all I am supposed to do, and this is crap. I already save everything each night in 2 locations because I have saved left and the next morning files were completely missing, so I am a bit paranoid, but to have autosave not doing anything what is the point.

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

2018-07-30T11:10:35+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.
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Anonymous

2018-06-13T16:18:01+00:00

Check out Andrew Main's comment from March. It fixed it for me! I still crash obviously, but it keeps my autorecover files now :)
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Anonymous

2018-06-13T04:10:59+00:00

I have auto save on for every 3 minutes, I save my work on a regular basis, as in everytime I get up from my computer, I had been working on 3 different excel spreadsheets at once and had put quite a bit of work in each one of them, when all of a sudden I got a not responding, I hit the wait for it to respond 4 times and it never went to that, finally I closed out assuming that since I have auto save on at worst I would lose a few minutes of work, NOTHING had been saved in the 4 hours I had been working, yes I prob should have saved while in the middle of all the work but I didn't, I do save when I stand up which is why I only lost 4 hours of work not almost 8 but WTF, I have done all I am supposed to do, and this is crap. I already save everything each night in 2 locations because I have saved left and the next morning files were completely missing, so I am a bit paranoid, but to have autosave not doing anything what is the point.
Was this answer helpful?

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