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.

This just happened to me as well. For some reason, unmerging a handful of cells triggered an Excel crash, and it turns out that there was no autorecover file (or, it was autodeleted by Excel). I've got all the settings turned on for Autosave, and consider myself an advanced Excel user (I've written enterprise applications in VBA). The same thing happened to one of my coworkers on Friday, when she tried to hide two columns- Excel crashed, and the autorecover files were either never created, or were deleted by Excel when it tried to recover the file(s)- again, recovering the original copy, with none of the changes made over multiple hours of work. At this point, I believe the Autorecover feature is nonfunctional, and hope that MS gets enough complaints that they investigate and identify the root cause I'm using Win7 x64, with Office 2016 x32 on a Dell Latitude E7450 laptop. Autorecover has worked for me in the past, so I'm inclined to blame an MS update (like the one that recently messed up merged cells in Word/Outlook, which I still have to live with until our IT department rolls out the patch MS released for that one)

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

Just reporting that I've seen the same behaviour in a clients office 2013 install after the last office updates.

I'm reeeaaalllly getting tired of this ish crashing and NEVER recovering my work that matters! It always seems to save things I could care less about!!! And no, that "disable AutoRecover" box is not checked, and I have changed my AutoRecover intervals time to now every 20 minutes (as per my "IT dept" suggested), and it still doesn't save it! This is not just specific to office 2016 btw....this has been an issue for us since 2009... I have just lost the last 3+ hours of work for the umpteenth time, and that whole "be sure to manually save" bs is just that...BS! 'Cause guess what happens when I click save to often!?!?! Thats right folks!!! Everything (as in everything Microsoft office...not my whole computer screen) turns whitish and crashes!!! Aaaaaaand this is all after getting a whole new computer and updated microsoft office. And guess why I just lost the last 3 hours of work!?!?! Cause I clicked the save button!!!!! How dare I use a system the way it is intended to be used! ((~shakes fist~)) Anyway.... my point is... FIX IT MICROSOFT PEOPLE!!! (I tend to go .............. dot crazy in frustration ;P ) Sincerely, Your Fellow Frustrated Accountant Whom is Tired of Microsoft Auto Replies and Fixes and Nothing Getting Fixed or Resolved :D

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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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

2017-11-13T13:54:02+00:00

This just happened to me as well. For some reason, unmerging a handful of cells triggered an Excel crash, and it turns out that there was no autorecover file (or, it was autodeleted by Excel). I've got all the settings turned on for Autosave, and consider myself an advanced Excel user (I've written enterprise applications in VBA).

The same thing happened to one of my coworkers on Friday, when she tried to hide two columns- Excel crashed, and the autorecover files were either never created, or were deleted by Excel when it tried to recover the file(s)- again, recovering the original copy, with none of the changes made over multiple hours of work.

At this point, I believe the Autorecover feature is nonfunctional, and hope that MS gets enough complaints that they investigate and identify the root cause

I'm using Win7 x64, with Office 2016 x32 on a Dell Latitude E7450 laptop. Autorecover has worked for me in the past, so I'm inclined to blame an MS update (like the one that recently messed up merged cells in Word/Outlook, which I still have to live with until our IT department rolls out the patch MS released for that one)
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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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Anonymous

2017-12-18T13:16:22+00:00

Just reporting that I've seen the same behaviour in a clients office 2013 install after the last office updates.
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Anonymous

2017-12-27T03:45:43+00:00

I'm reeeaaalllly getting tired of this ish crashing and NEVER recovering my work that matters! It always seems to save things I could care less about!!! And no, that "disable AutoRecover" box is not checked, and I have changed my AutoRecover intervals time to now every 20 minutes (as per my "IT dept" suggested), and it still doesn't save it!

This is not just specific to office 2016 btw....this has been an issue for us since 2009...

I have just lost the last 3+ hours of work for the umpteenth time, and that whole "be sure to manually save" bs is just that...BS! 'Cause guess what happens when I click save to often!?!?! Thats right folks!!! Everything (as in everything Microsoft office...not my whole computer screen) turns whitish and crashes!!! Aaaaaaand this is all after getting a whole new computer and updated microsoft office. And guess why I just lost the last 3 hours of work!?!?! Cause I clicked the save button!!!!! How dare I use a system the way it is intended to be used! ((~shakes fist~))

Anyway.... my point is... FIX IT MICROSOFT PEOPLE!!!

(I tend to go .............. dot crazy in frustration ;P )

Sincerely,

Your Fellow Frustrated Accountant Whom is Tired of Microsoft Auto Replies and Fixes and Nothing Getting Fixed or Resolved :D
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3 people found this answer helpful.

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