The major downside to this feature is that the AutoRecover data is stored on the same hard drive as your file, so if something happens to your hard drive, everything will be gone. Overall, this is a really useful feature for those times when you didn’t save all your work, but Excel ends unexpectedly. In my case, it had the original file, which had data in just A1 and A2, and it also had the AutoRecovered file, which included the data that I had not saved to disk.Ĭlicking on any of the items in the list will open another instance of Excel showing the data in that particular file. If you click on that, it will bring up a list of Excel files that can be recovered. After that, I reopened Excel and immediately saw an option called Show Recovered Files.
In my case, I simulated an Excel crash by opening the task manager and killing the Excel process. Since the AutoRecover interval is set for 10 minutes, you need to wait at least that long for the data to be saved. Now let’s say I add the following data to the Excel spreadsheet and wait about 10 minutes without saving my document. So how does it work? Basically, let’s say you have a worksheet like the one below and you have it saved. Also, the autosaved information is saved in the AutoRecover file location listed here. In addition to the interval, Excel has to be idle for 30 seconds before the data will be saved. By default, AutoRecover information is saved every 10 minutes.
