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.

That does not address the question. Autosave in Excel is buggy. You should at least say you are going to tell or ask the Office support/maintenance team about it. Truth does not hurt Microsoft image, not being responsive does.

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 Andrew's fix worked for me too. It's autosaving now. But it means that the real answer is: "This is a known bug that Microsoft refuses to fix or even acknowledge, and your unsaved data is gone forever, despite the false reassurance of the autorecovery settings." Sorry people, just give up -- do not waste more of your time and tears and energy trying to get back your work, because you can't.

Thousands of people have reported this problem and they STILL aren't fixing it or even taking it seriously. This is incredible. I lost hours and hours worth of work today because of this catastrophic bug, and it is absolutely Microsoft's fault. This is 2018--literally every other app in the universe has figured out how to Autosave. I'm using a Microsoft Surface Laptop running Windows 10 with MS Office.

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.

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

2018-05-09T14:45:22+00:00

That does not address the question. Autosave in Excel is buggy. You should at least say you are going to tell or ask the Office support/maintenance team about it. Truth does not hurt Microsoft image, not being responsive does.
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Anonymous

2018-04-18T22:09:13+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

Andrew's fix worked for me too. It's autosaving now.

But it means that the real answer is: "This is a known bug that Microsoft refuses to fix or even acknowledge, and your unsaved data is gone forever, despite the false reassurance of the autorecovery settings."

Sorry people, just give up -- do not waste more of your time and tears and energy trying to get back your work, because you can't.
Was this answer helpful?

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Anonymous

2018-04-18T21:43:44+00:00

Thousands of people have reported this problem and they STILL aren't fixing it or even taking it seriously. This is incredible. I lost hours and hours worth of work today because of this catastrophic bug, and it is absolutely Microsoft's fault. This is 2018--literally every other app in the universe has figured out how to Autosave.

I'm using a Microsoft Surface Laptop running Windows 10 with MS Office.
Was this answer helpful?

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Anonymous

2018-04-06T02:14:58+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.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments