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 to add to the acute frustration, I just lost the past two days work on Excel 365, with all the same 'ticks' as above except the second last 'white screen' trigger. My nemesis seems to be putting my laptop to sleep, which seems to cause a crash only when Excel is running. All data lost, with the recovery screen showing only the 'last saved' version. I don't have a problem with the 'Disable AutoRecover' check box that some seem to have. We need a social media campaign, maybe leading to a viral Twitter hashtag like '#MicrosoftXLSRip-off' or '#FixMicrosoftExcelNow' or... I'll stop before I get rude. And I am certainly no Microsoft Professional, but I bought my first IBM computer in 1982, and have used spreadsheets every day since. Long Live Lotus 1-2-3!

Just lost 2 weeks of work. Unbelievable. All the right boxes ticked.

Same problem, checkboxes correct, has happened twice. It appears that Microsoft no longer supports autosave unless the file has already been saved to one of their cloud locations. "If you have Office 2016 with an Office 365 Subscription you should have the AutoSave feature which automatically saves what you're working on in real time as long as the file you're working on is saved to OneDrive or SharePoint." "This file location doesn't support AutoSave. Save to OneDrive or SharePoint Online if you want to use AutoSave." This would be more palatable if they did it more transparently, but they seem to be letting people lose their data by not warning them that the autosave feature is otherwise disabled. How about this: "Saving to a non-Microsoft-clould-drive will disable autosave. Are you sure?" Oh, and shouldn't those checkboxes be grayed out if they aren't applicable? And how about a response here?

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?

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

2018-03-14T23:43:21+00:00

Just to add to the acute frustration, I just lost the past two days work on Excel 365, with all the same 'ticks' as above except the second last 'white screen' trigger. My nemesis seems to be putting my laptop to sleep, which seems to cause a crash only when Excel is running. All data lost, with the recovery screen showing only the 'last saved' version. I don't have a problem with the 'Disable AutoRecover' check box that some seem to have.

We need a social media campaign, maybe leading to a viral Twitter hashtag like '#MicrosoftXLSRip-off' or '#FixMicrosoftExcelNow' or... I'll stop before I get rude.

And I am certainly no Microsoft Professional, but I bought my first IBM computer in 1982, and have used spreadsheets every day since. Long Live Lotus 1-2-3!
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Anonymous

2018-03-15T10:19:47+00:00

Just lost 2 weeks of work. Unbelievable. All the right boxes ticked.
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Anonymous

2018-03-15T19:47:07+00:00

Same problem, checkboxes correct, has happened twice. It appears that Microsoft no longer supports autosave unless the file has already been saved to one of their cloud locations. "If you have Office 2016 with an Office 365 Subscription you should have the AutoSave feature which automatically saves what you're working on in real time as long as the file you're working on is saved to OneDrive or SharePoint." "This file location doesn't support AutoSave. Save to OneDrive or SharePoint Online if you want to use AutoSave." This would be more palatable if they did it more transparently, but they seem to be letting people lose their data by not warning them that the autosave feature is otherwise disabled. How about this: "Saving to a non-Microsoft-clould-drive will disable autosave. Are you sure?" Oh, and shouldn't those checkboxes be grayed out if they aren't applicable? And how about a response here?
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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?
Was this answer helpful?

1 person found this answer helpful.

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