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
    2018-11-12T22:07:07+00:00

    SAME PROBLEM... I've been using Microsoft Office products since the '90's... don't need advice on auto-save.  There is something drastically wrong with the application.  Just lost my work and am not happy about it.  It would be nice if Microsoft could give this some attention.

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-11-30T22:10:25+00:00

    SAME PROBLEM... I've been using Microsoft Office products since the '90's... don't need advice on auto-save.  There is something drastically wrong with the application.  Just lost my work and am not happy about it.  It would be nice if Microsoft could give this some attention.  

    This problem still exists Microsoft.. 

    Having previously experienced the issue I had checked here before and unchecked the highlighted box as recommended by the thread here. Autosave then started working. It seems although this check box appears to be for auto recovery when checked autosave does not work so there is some incorrect link in the code behind this check box settings. And yes all updates installed. On latest updates this check box was again ticked post the upgrade meaning autosave files were not being saved. Once again I unchecked the box and autosave immediately starts working. My autosave is set to 1 minute.

    Microsoft.....  This has been reported for years, why is this so hard to test / recreate in your test environment?

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-12-23T22:42:53+00:00

    I would love for Microsoft to respond or attempt to fix this.

    Using Excel 2016 on a Mac, I had a power outage, went to autorecover and there were no files. Checked preference and autosave/autorecover were toggled on. This usually works fine on my Windows machine, on my macbook, it is just not possible to locate the files and when I open Excel there is no option to open any autorecovered files.

    This is the kind of lossiness in feature that makes a user really question why they would use the product. So untrustworthy! Lost 3 hours of work with no autosave. Terrible lack of support from Microsoft.

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  4. Anonymous
    2019-01-18T06:10:51+00:00

    Microsoft does not give a flying fork about its customers or the havoc it wreaks with its untested updates. They have such a hardon to look like they're accomplishing something that they release crap ad nauseum. Despite how far behind the curve Google is, it will eventually get all the market share that Microsoft is **** all over.

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