Recover Your Unsaved Excel Spreadsheets via AutoSave & AutoRecover Features (Part I)

Excel is widely used in many companies and organizations. However, sometimes many reasons can close Excel files before you can save it. And today we will introduce the ways to prevent such conditions by setting the saving AutoRecover information.

When you have finished inputting information into an Excel file, you will accidently close it before saving. And this behavior will happen due to many different reasons, you click the wrong button, you have thought that the latest information in the file is useless, or someone else closes the file. On the other hand, if you are working on your Excel file, suddenly the power fails and the computer shuts down before you can save your file. As a result, you will lose the data before you have saved.

However, Microsoft has previously thought of such occasions and provided a remedial measure. And this measure is exactly setting the saving AutoRecover information.

Making Sure You have the Correct Setting

If you don’t have the correct setting, then you are unable to retrieve your important information. So this setting is very important.

1. Click “File” on the ribbon.
2. And then click “Options”.
3. And then the new window will pop up. Choose the “Save” option.

And on the right, you will find that there are several options. And now you should make sure that you have checked the two options: Save AutoRecovery information every xx minutes and the Keep the last auto saved versions if I close without saving. Thus you are able to find your lost data. As for the length of time, you can set according to your need. And if your computer has a high configuration, you can set a short time, such as 1 minute. Thus your file can get a higher security.

After all the setting, now we will see how this function works in Excel. And there are also three different conditions.

Case 1: Closing an Existing File without Saving the Modifications

In this case, you have already created an independent Excel file. And now you need to update some information in it. But when you close it, you accidentally choose the option “Don’t Save” in the alert box.

You may notice that in this box, it also shows: a recent copy of this file will be temporarily available. Therefore, you can still recover your Excel file. And the following are the steps.

1. Open the target Excel file.
2. Click the “File” on the ribbon. And then you will see that there is an option in the part of “Version”.

This is exactly the auto saved copy that the alert box shows.

3. Click this option, and all your unsaved information will appear.
4. And now you can click the “Restore” to save this file.
5. And then in the new window, click “OK”. Thus, you have found back the unsaved information.

This article is part of the AutoRecover information in Excel. And in our next part, we will introduce the other two conditions.

Author Introduction:

Anna Ma is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including word recovery and outlook repair software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com