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.

I went back to Excel 2010 this morning. I lost a days work and found that disable autorecover is a default and I cant seem to change it. It always reverts back to disabled. I work in areas without internet access sometimes, so not being able to autosave to my C:\ drive is a deal breaker. I work for a fire department in our wildland fire division...sort of by definition I am out in the woods if the taxpayers are getting their monies worth for me. I understand Microsoft wants to force people onto Onedrive and off of Dropbox and such. But this seems draconian. I wonder how long I can stay on Windows 7 and Office 2010? Microsoft did refund my Office 365 payment with no problem. They were understanding about why I had to cancel. Strange business strategy....

On MacBook and Excel can't Autorecover. Word does, Powerpoint does. But not Excel. I just lost 2 hours of work when Excel crashed and reopened with nothing. There is nothing in the Autorecovery folder. I even tried to have it autosaved every minute, but nothing, nada! Why isn't this fixed already! This thread goes back to October and we are in February!!

Same as everyone listed here. Hours and hours of work in Excel 2016, and Windows 10 forces an update and automatic restart while I'm out of the room. After reboot, no autosaves are found. Back to square one. Utter garbage, especially considering this thread is four months old. My settings, showing that autosaves should indeed be generated. 16,

Same problem here. Excel seems to be crashing more frequently and auto-recover is not working. I've tried setting it with some simple dummy files with minimal info and no recovery file is ever made.

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

2018-02-13T17:13:49+00:00

I went back to Excel 2010 this morning. I lost a days work and found that disable autorecover is a default and I cant seem to change it. It always reverts back to disabled. I work in areas without internet access sometimes, so not being able to autosave to my C:\ drive is a deal breaker. I work for a fire department in our wildland fire division...sort of by definition I am out in the woods if the taxpayers are getting their monies worth for me.

I understand Microsoft wants to force people onto Onedrive and off of Dropbox and such. But this seems draconian. I wonder how long I can stay on Windows 7 and Office 2010?

Microsoft did refund my Office 365 payment with no problem. They were understanding about why I had to cancel. Strange business strategy....
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Anonymous

2018-02-14T06:14:23+00:00

On MacBook and Excel can't Autorecover. Word does, Powerpoint does. But not Excel. I just lost 2 hours of work when Excel crashed and reopened with nothing. There is nothing in the Autorecovery folder. I even tried to have it autosaved every minute, but nothing, nada! Why isn't this fixed already! This thread goes back to October and we are in February!!
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Anonymous

2018-02-14T08:19:28+00:00

Same as everyone listed here. Hours and hours of work in Excel 2016, and Windows 10 forces an update and automatic restart while I'm out of the room. After reboot, no autosaves are found. Back to square one. Utter garbage, especially considering this thread is four months old.

My settings, showing that autosaves should indeed be generated.

16,
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Anonymous

2018-02-14T21:35:18+00:00

Same problem here. Excel seems to be crashing more frequently and auto-recover is not working. I've tried setting it with some simple dummy files with minimal info and no recovery file is ever made.
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