AutoSave switch greyed-out.

A couple of days ago, I noticed that the save icon at the top of the Excel window in version 1707 of Office 365 has been moved a little to the right because a new greyed-out AutoSave button has appeared. It is set to "Off". 

Does anyone know how to turn it on?

In my experience, if "Use Office [version] to sync Office files that I open" is not checked, AutoSave will not be available.

Right click OneDrive>Settings>Office

Want to get rid of Autosave?  Then go to Feedback Hub and upvote the topic I just posted there. That is the way to get Microsoft to actually take notice. (You'd think they would pay attention in these forums also, but apparently they don't.)

In Feedback Hub, search for this topic by typing some or all of the summary title in the Summarize-your-issue box: "Autosave is redundant, confusing, and useless. And it doesn't work. Delete this feature."

Once finding it, upvote it.  Feel free to add comments there as well.  Apparently activity there counts more than activity here.  Dumb, but that's Microsoft for ya.

(I just posted it - may take a while to show up there.)

Hi Bruce.. 

Thank you for the response but I'm not actually after removing the auto-save feature.  I have had it save my work about 6 times over the past 20 yrs and those were great saves when it worked.  The simplicity of searching your device for the ~files and knowing where to look when you elect not to use the recovery file was always a big value.  Now its not where users expect it or saved how users expect.

Forcing us into manually remembering to save a document that may be several tens of pages long, while a no-brainer from an editing standpoint is not a work-process "feature", it is a barrier to continuous workflow. 

I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir and I think, based on your feedback you get it.

I sincerely appreciate the value "auto-save" provides (primarily for folks who don't work off of mobile devices and laptops) when an unexpected failure causes a CPU to scramble or power to go out.  That is why the feature was put in service in the late 80' in the first place.

What has happened with the Office365 implementation is moving it from auto-save on a local or optionally cloud sync location, to only a cloud-sync location is counter-productive.  When we had 1000 office users switched over to the company Office 365 implementation we had continuous trouble with auto-save pushing to the cloud incorrectly, or not at all and also NOT leaving any remnant files on the actual PC's.  It is a much bigger problem than I think is realized given many users just get frustrated that Microsoft is tone deaf on some issue.

I'll definitely go look to provide feedback on the application hub (which I've already done btw and it never hurts to do it more than once.)

Autosave is NOT Autorecover.  Autorecover has been around for 10+ years.  Autosave is a redundant feature that only works with OneDrive - when it works at all.  It is also confusing as it has a similar name to Autorecover.  Autorecover should do it all - whether in the cloud or on the local hard drive. 

Autosave is confusing, redundant, broken, and therefore useless.  Just get rid of it.

Want to get rid of Autosave?  Then go to Feedback Hub and upvote the topic I just posted there. That is the way to get Microsoft to actually take notice. (You'd think they would pay attention in these forums also, but apparently they don't.)

In Feedback Hub, search for this topic by typing some or all of the summary title in the Summarize-your-issue box: "Autosave is redundant, confusing, and useless. And it doesn't work. Delete this feature."

Once finding it, upvote it.  Feel free to add comments there as well.  Apparently activity there counts more than activity here.  Dumb, but that's Microsoft for ya.

(I just posted it - may take a while to show up there.)

Hi Bruce.. 

Thank you for the response but I'm not actually after removing the auto-save feature.  I have had it save my work about 6 times over the past 20 yrs and those were great saves when it worked.  The simplicity of searching your device for the ~files and knowing where to look when you elect not to use the recovery file was always a big value.  Now its not where users expect it or saved how users expect.

Forcing us into manually remembering to save a document that may be several tens of pages long, while a no-brainer from an editing standpoint is not a work-process "feature", it is a barrier to continuous workflow. 

I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir and I think, based on your feedback you get it.

I sincerely appreciate the value "auto-save" provides (primarily for folks who don't work off of mobile devices and laptops) when an unexpected failure causes a CPU to scramble or power to go out.  That is why the feature was put in service in the late 80' in the first place.

What has happened with the Office365 implementation is moving it from auto-save on a local or optionally cloud sync location, to only a cloud-sync location is counter-productive.  When we had 1000 office users switched over to the company Office 365 implementation we had continuous trouble with auto-save pushing to the cloud incorrectly, or not at all and also NOT leaving any remnant files on the actual PC's.  It is a much bigger problem than I think is realized given many users just get frustrated that Microsoft is tone deaf on some issue.

I'll definitely go look to provide feedback on the application hub (which I've already done btw and it never hurts to do it more than once.)

Want to get rid of Autosave?  Then go to Feedback Hub and upvote the topic I just posted there. That is the way to get Microsoft to actually take notice. (You'd think they would pay attention in these forums also, but apparently they don't.)

In Feedback Hub, search for this topic by typing some or all of the summary title in the Summarize-your-issue box: "Autosave is redundant, confusing, and useless. And it doesn't work. Delete this feature."

Once finding it, upvote it.  Feel free to add comments there as well.  Apparently activity there counts more than activity here.  Dumb, but that's Microsoft for ya.

(I just posted it - may take a while to show up there.)