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
    2018-01-31T21:02:18+00:00

    I am experiencing the same issue in Excel 2016 in Windows 10 (Autorecovery is set to 10 min, no exceptions) . I've just lost 2 weeks of important work.

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-02-05T22:01:48+00:00

    Ditto here, running on a Macbook Pro.  Not only are there no autorecover files, but as best I can tell "Autosave"  is not available unless you choose to save remotely on Microsoft's OneDrive.  How stupid is that.

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-02-08T16:06:50+00:00

    Same here. Everything is set up correctly, yet Excel refuses to autosave. Need a fix please.

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-02-08T20:25:43+00:00

    It has been over 4 months and this issue is not resolved!

    I keep loosing work that is supposed to be AutoRecovered! I have it set to every 1 min! I also had found that the Disable AutoRecover was checked about a month ago. Why would that even be an option!

    I am also noting that there is one file in the recommended spot, but it is a binary file, not what I told Excel to use. But, never the less, the file is not updating every minute!

    I lost 2 hours of work this morning and have been researching this issue ever since.

    And on a separate note, the AutoSave (only to MS cloud spaces) is completely Effed up! Let me AutoSave wherever I want!

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