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
    2019-08-14T16:14:41+00:00

    Thank you for saying something LK Hill.  I have been irate at losing excel data that I had been working on for hours.  I started a new job (using Win10 for the first time) and I work in accounting so all I do is use Excel. For Microsoft to take away a HUGE function that we have been able to rely on is just STUPID. 

    Microsoft did not take away AutoRecover. It has been in the product for decades and continues to work the same as it always has. AutoRecover (not AutoSave) is the feature that works when you save to your desktop or any other local file location.

    FLAT OUT DUMB.  I saved my spreadsheet to my desktop and didn't realize that the auto save was off because I've never dealt with that option before. 

    When you save to your desktop, AutoRecover (not AutoSave) is active. AutoSave automatically turns off when you save to a local directory. AutoRecover automatically turns on when you save to a local file location (unless you changed the setting in Excel preferences). This is not new behavior. AutoRecover is the same behavior that has existed for decades.

    I lost a week's worth of work.  Then I tried to turn it on and thought it was.  Lost another batch of work.  It happened for the third time today.  I have not got any work done today because I have been spending the majority of my time reading everyone's forums and complaints about this crappy function.  I tried to find if people created work arounds but it doesn't look like anyone has cheated the system yet.  I will continue to look because there are a lot of intelligent people out there, who know this is a necessity.

    You can't turn AutoSave on for files saved to your desktop. When you save to your desktop, AutoRecover is active.

    Microsoft,

    I am not Microsoft. I do not work for Microsoft. This is a forum where users help each other. You are not writing to Microsoft in this forum.

    Do not talk to me or anyone else about auto-recover when we are clearly **** about the fact that we can only autosave to OneDrive. 

    AutoSave works when saving to OneDrive or SharePoint. You saved to your Desktop. You used AutoRecover, not AutoSave.

    Every forum and every complaint that I have seen, replied have switched the subject to auto-recover but DO NOT address what the true complaint is!  Stop deflecting! 

    No one is deflecting. You're simply not paying attention. We tell you about AutoRecover because you saved to your desktop. That's when AutoRecover comes into play instead of AutoSave.

    Autosave should be a function NOT attached to OneDrive. Period. (I also have NEVER found a document recovered via the paths listed in previous replies.  There must be a 5 min time limit)

    AutoSave works ONLY with OneDrive and SharePoint. AutoSave is a new feature designed to work only with OneDrive and SharePoint. You can't use AutoSave with local files. The feature that has been around forever is AutoRecover and that is what works with files saved on your local drives.

    Even if OneDrive worked (Which it does not and has not let me login - another problem...shocker.) I CAN NOT USE ONEDRIVE because I have sensitive work documents that I will not save on a cloud no matter how secure you say it is. 

    You are free to save files locally or "in the cloud" on OneDrive or SharePoint. The choice is yours. The recovery technologies are different. Locally saved files can be recovered using AutoRecover. Files saved to OneDrive or SharePoint can be recovered using AutoSave.

    When you save changes to your file and close the workbook, the AutoRecover file is no longer needed and is automatically deleted. Only if Excel is force quit, crashes or there's a power failure does the AutoRecover file come into play.  Once you have successfully saved your file locally, Mac OS is in charge. If you delete the saved file, you can recover it using Time Machine.

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  2. Anonymous
    2019-08-19T15:08:35+00:00

    Further to the efficacy of Auto-Recover, my neighborhood had a momentary blackout on Friday. When I restarted my Mac, I discovered that a key Word document I'd been working on had reverted to a week-ago version, with no AutoRecover. I lost about four hours of work - a half day that I now have the pleasure of trying to recreate.

    God, I hate Microsoft.

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  3. Jim G 134K Reputation points MVP
    2019-08-19T15:18:10+00:00

    Hi LK

    Check Word Preferences > Save. Make sure AutoRecover is turned on by checking the Save AutoRecover Info checkbox. You can set the amount of time between saves. 

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  4. Anonymous
    2019-08-19T15:41:52+00:00

    This is the [current] core of my complaint - AutoRecover was turned on, and yet it didn't work. See screen shot below...

    Should I turn AutoSave off, since it's useless without OneDrive?

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  5. Jim G 134K Reputation points MVP
    2019-08-25T12:54:19+00:00

    It isn't necessary to turn AutoSave off when not saving to OneDrive or SharePoint. Office apps will automatically turn AutoSave off when you save anywhere else.

    You have AutoRecover set to save every 5 minutes.

    AutoRecover does not come into play until your document has been saved at least once to a local directory. Saving to network, DropBox or other cloud services may not cause AutoRecover to save a backup file.

    AutoRecover will restore the most recent (in your case at most 5 minutes old) backup after a crash the next time you open Microsoft Word.

    Set your AutoRecover location in Word Preferences > File Location. Be sure to choose a location that is not blocked by Apple's Sandboxing scheme. Somewhere in your Documents folder is a good place to choose.

    If you have not set a location for your AutoRecover file in Word > Preferences, the default file location is this hidden directory:

    /Users/<username>/Library/Containers/com.Microsoft/Data/Library/Preferences/AutoRecovery

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