Autosave? Where is it stored?

[Mark Savage]

I did the most idiotic thing: I clicked on No instead of Yes when asked if I
wanted to Save the file..... 3 hours worth of Data entry gone... .UGH!

Now I know that Excel saves to an Autosave file every few minutes...Does
anyone know where to access those files? Is there anything to be done for
me?

Thanks in advance for any advice

Mark

 

[Robert Rosenberg]

Unfortunately I believe you're out of luck. There is an AutoSave feature in
XP and 2003. However, once you say yes or no to a save prompt or save the
file manually, that temporary copy gets deleted.
_______________________
Robert Rosenberg
R-COR Consulting Services
Microsoft MVP - Excel

 

[Jim Rech]

You didn't save for 3 hours? You're a bad boy, Mark<g>. By way of
comparison, I press Ctrl-s every 5 minutes.

Just to expand on Robert's reply.... There was an "AutoSave" utility
included in Excel up through Excel 2000. This was an add-in that you turned
on via Tool, Add-ins, and it saved your actual workbook. So there was no
extra copy saved somewhere else.

In Excel 2002 and 2003 this was replaced (sort of) by the "AutoRecover"
feature. MS thought (wrongly in my opinion) that people used AutoSave
mainly to recover from crashes, not to do a regular save for them. If you
crash Excel, when you restart Excel helpfully pops up a list of files it's
been saving for you. So you won't have lost much work. But if you exit
Excel without a crash, Excel deletes the backups it's been saving since
they're not needed for recovery purposes. This change in design has snagged
a lot of people I'm afraid.

 

[Dave Peterson]

And just to add to Jim's response if you are using xl2002 (or xl2003???):

If you can find an earlier version of that autosave addin, it seems to work fine
in xl2002.

 

[Mark Savage]

Thank you everyone for your replies....

I guess that 3 hours worth of work isn't too terrible a loss.

And like all disasters, it made me suddenly think about protecting myself
for the future. I'm looking at all my backups and stuff and changing tapes
and burning backup CDs

But what an Idiot I am! Phew!

Thanks again guys

Mark