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've just experienced the same problem. Was working on an Excel document over the past few days, equaling hours of work, and then poof! Gone this morning, reverting back to a version from months ago, and no auto-recovery in sight. The proposed Mac resolution doesn't help because I'm not working on a Mac computer. I even double checked that the auto-recovery settings are in place, which they are. Seriously wondering again why I even bothered with MS Office document when I could've just used Google Sheets with a promised auto-save!

If this is the correct forum to discuss issues with Office then WHY are Microsoft NOT responding with any helpful information !!!! I have 2 users that periodically lose information because of this bug. To have at least some idea on when it will be fixed would be very helpful please MS, or even confirmation it is being looked at .... sigh

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

2019-03-10T19:04:44+00:00

I've just experienced the same problem. Was working on an Excel document over the past few days, equaling hours of work, and then poof! Gone this morning, reverting back to a version from months ago, and no auto-recovery in sight. The proposed Mac resolution doesn't help because I'm not working on a Mac computer. I even double checked that the auto-recovery settings are in place, which they are.

Seriously wondering again why I even bothered with MS Office document when I could've just used Google Sheets with a promised auto-save!
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Anonymous

2019-02-20T09:41:01+00:00

If this is the correct forum to discuss issues with Office then WHY are Microsoft NOT responding with any helpful information !!!! I have 2 users that periodically lose information because of this bug. To have at least some idea on when it will be fixed would be very helpful please MS, or even confirmation it is being looked at .... sigh
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