AutoSave switch greyed-out.

Anonymous
2017-08-04T15:40:16+00:00

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?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2017-08-04T16:25:12+00:00

this is from:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/What-is-AutoSave-6d6bd723-ebfd-4e40-b5f6-ae6e8088f7a5?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

"AutoSave is enabled when working on a file that is saved to OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, or SharePoint Online. If the file is saved to another location, then AutoSave is disabled. This will happen if your file is on a SharePoint On Premises site, a file server, or saved to a local path like C:.

There are other reasons AutoSave could be disabled as well. For example, if your file is in an older format like .xls, .ppt, or .doc., it will be disabled. It will also be disabled if your presentation is in slide show mode, or if your workbook contains password protection. If AutoSave is disabled, you can always hover over the AutoSave switch and a tooltip will tell you why it's off."

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-03-02T21:19:51+00:00

    Perhaps try repairing the application to see if that corrects your problem:

    https://support.office.com/en-us/article/repair-an-office-application-7821d4b6-7c1d-4205-aa0e-a6b40c5bb88b

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-03-02T19:26:40+00:00

    Great. This does answer my question, kinda. But it doesn't completely fix the issue I have, and forces me to jump through unnecessary hoops.

    So, it's still cumbersome as hell… Auto-save will only become available (and switch itself on) if I open the file through the File > Open menu in Word, and then select “Online Sources”. Even if the file is saved in OneDrive, if I open it through the Finder, Word will essentially treat it as any regular old file.

    Worse: if I drag the proxy document icon from the titlebar to a folder or to the Dock to create an alias/shortcut, even if I do so having opened it through the File > Open menu as stated above, said alias/shortcut will still behave as if I would be opening the file directly from its location.

    I mean, OneDrive already has special access to the Finder via a macOS extension; how hard could improving its integration be? I am currently working in my MFA thesis, and I like having one-click access to my working file directly through the Dock, is that too much or exotic to ask?

    To make matters worse, I have this stupid bug in Word/OneDrive which prevents the latter from syncing any file changes after saving it until I quit the former. Maybe if I just open the files through File > Open that won't be a problem? Still, it would be a terrible user experience by any account or measure. I never had this kind of issues back when I was using Dropbox…

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-02-28T20:03:19+00:00

    Umm, did you bother to read the previous post? 

    1. AutoRecover still works just as it always has. 
    2. If you think that AutoSave is a redundant, confusing, and otherwise steaming pile of BS, complain on Feedback Hub, not here.

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-02-27T09:57:30+00:00

    Dear Microsoft 

    My company's networking policy does not permit use of online storage services... and even if it did with the quality of internet connection at the place of my work I would still have files on my local drives. I guess I'm not the only person in the world that must work from local drives and still would like to have AutoSave enabled... so I'm asking you to find another way of encouraging us to use OneDrive rather than turning off feature that is affecting our work… especially with Meltdown and Spectre calamity and computers rebooting/ going into BSOD etc… I’ve already lost couple of days of work due to that matter… so I have couple of questions

    1. What is the logic behind disabling autosave for files stored locally?
    2. What to do if company policies are preventing from using online storage but Autosave still required?
    3. When will Microsoft stop treating it’s users as guinea pigs?

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