Why does AutoSave in Office 365 only work on Microsoft OneDrive?!?

Anonymous
2019-02-03T21:53:24+00:00

Recently I lost power in my home after working on a spreadsheet for over three hours. Even though Auto-save was turned on in preferences, I lost ALL the work-- Auto-recover did not capture any of the changes, either. I had to spend the rest of the day re-creating my changes.

Needless to say, I was pretty pissed off, and went to research how Microsoft had managed to lose all my data. I first went to confirm that AutoSave was turned on, and found "Turn on AutoSave by default" checked on the Preferences/Save panel. However, in the document title bar, AutoSave displayed as "OFF" and was grayed out to the point of imperceptibility. This is true not just of Excel, but Word and Powerpoint as well.

I licensed Office 365 from GoDaddy, so I called their tech support line, and they gave me the incredible story that AUTOSAVE ONLY WORKS WHEN YOU STORE YOUR DOCUMENTS ON MICROSOFT ONEDRIVE - not natively on the Mac or on DropBox, which I've used for years.

****, are you kidding me? According to the "Datanyze.com" website, OneDrive has less than 9% of the "File Sharing" market, well behind DropBox, Box, and GoogleDrive. Even assuming that all Google users are backed up to Google's servers, 2/3 of users out there aren't able to automatically back up their changes because they don't use OneDrive.

Even worse, most have probably been head-faked by Microsoft into thinking that they're safe because AutoSave displays as automatically turned on in Preferences. They don't notice the obscure label in the title bar and don't find out it's actually not turned on until they're hit with a disaster like I was, and then wonder **** happened. 

This policy is patently irresponsible, and anti-competitive to boot.  In order to have AutoSave, you not only have to store your documents on OneDrive, you have to start them up from OneDrive - not your Mac hard drive folder icon - or AutoSave is still turned off.

Now, I'm back to the pre-cloud days of having to constantly remember to save documents as I make important changes to them. Seriously?!?

And don't suggest that AutoRecover will keep me covered in the absence of AutoSave: I've lost countless hours of work when AutoRecover does not do its job. Its reliability on the Mac has always been spotty.

This is crazy. Is Microsoft really willing to callously risk the data integrity of the majority of its users just to coerce them to switch to OneDrive?!?

IMHO, what Microsoft needs to do is:

  1. Display clearly in Preferences/Save that AutoSave is NOT turned on (and change the misleading "automatically as default" wording),
  2. State the reason (i.e. OneDrive required) so that users like me don't waste hours trying to determine whether it's just one more Office 365 bug,
  3. Add a local backup feature to Office 365 to automatically save to a hard-drive or competitive file sharing service (it can't be that hard),
  4. Stop being evil by claiming that not enough people have complained about the missing feature to justify its renewed availability.

Really, Microsoft should be ashamed of having pulled a stunt like this. It's an irresponsible, blatantly anti-competitive move, straight out of the naughty 80s.

[NOTE - this post has been updated to reflect the fact that AutoSave was a more recent development by Microsoft, not a long-standing feature.]

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows

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  1. Jim G 134K Reputation points MVP
    2020-01-20T19:54:42+00:00

    Hi Art

    As has been previously mentioned over and over there are two features with very similar sounding names.

    AutoRecover works when you save to a local directory

    AutoSave works when you save to OneDrive or SharePoint

    By default, AutoRecover turns on when AutoSave is off and vice-versa. Maybe it's deceptive that the AutoSave slider shows "Off" implying no recovery is being made. I think it should slide over to show AutoRecover is "On" instead of just "Off."

    You are always automatically using either AutoSave or AutoRecover unless you save to a different cloud service or network drive, in which case you get whatever backup that service offers (if any). I'll do what I can to get Microsoft to change this confusing situation.

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  2. Jim G 134K Reputation points MVP
    2020-01-19T19:15:28+00:00

    You want to put a OneDrive (in Microsoft's cloud) directory into a Google cloud directory? From a logic perspective, I don't see how that could possibly work without huge delays and confused operating systems.

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  3. Jim G 134K Reputation points MVP
    2019-12-26T18:03:01+00:00

    Hi Gill

    I don't mind helping users understand technology. It's what I get paid to do at work, and I do it for free after work.

    When it comes to the percentage of users who save "in the cloud" vs locally, that is information I do not have nor have access to. Microsoft, Google and Apple have been crusading for the past 10 years or so to capture as many users to their particular platforms as possible. I do not know how successful they have been in convincing the world that cloud computing is the be-all and end-all of computing.

    In the old days there were mainframes and dumb terminals. Then personal computing happened and that paradigm got turned on its ear. MAGA types (by that I mean those who want to return to the "good old days" before personal computers) would give anything to return to that model, and they haven't given up yet! Personally, I resist attempts to turn our personal computers back into dumb terminals run by computing dictators. I prefer local saves with local backup as opposed to cloud solutions, just so you know where I stand on this.

    Focusing on AutoSave, as I mentioned, this is a relatively new feature. It would seem logical to me that Microsoft would offer it first on their own "cloud" services: OneDrive and SharePoint. Microsoft has publicly stated that they want to support other platforms. If I were to guess which platform would be next, I would guess DropBox, because Microsoft has publicly stated they want to offer DropBox support. Perhaps Microsoft might support iCloud and other popular cloud services, too. Since Google is a primary competitor, I doubt supporting Google's cloud is high on their agenda. But you never know.

    Microsoft has feature suggestion site where you can make suggestions such as asking for support for Google drive. I just checked and did not see anyone asking for this support. You can make your suggestion here:

    Excel for Mac

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  4. Jim G 134K Reputation points MVP
    2019-12-10T16:51:25+00:00

    Calm down, Bill.

    As I said AutoRecover has NOT GONE AWAY.  It is still there and works the same as it has for years.

    AutoSAVE is a brand new feature that works with OneDrive and SharePoint. It gives users who CHOOSE to use these particular cloud services a recovery option they never had before. Prior to the introduction of AutoSAVE, cloud users had no recovery option whatsoever. It's a new option.

    Nothing was taken away. You can continue to use AutoRecover with files saved locally. In addition, files saved locally are backed up by Time Machine, so you have an additional backup in case an AutoRecover file is corrupt.

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  5. Jim G 134K Reputation points MVP
    2019-11-08T21:19:33+00:00

    Autosave is a new feature that works only with files saved to OneDrive or SharePoint

    You're confusing with the the AutoRecover feature which still exists and has not changed. Similar names, similar function, but different technologies are involved when saving locally as opposed to on a server.

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