How does autosave work in excel

A second window will open showing that version of the file. To roll back to this version, click the Restore button. For more information on version history, see View historical versions of Office files. When you open a file and make your first changes, AutoSave saves those changes and a new version of the file is added to the version history.

After that even though AutoSave is regularly saving your changes to the file, new versions are only added to the version history periodically about every 10 minutes for the remainder of your editing session.

If you're the owner of the file, you can set the file to always open read-only. When people open a file with this setting, they won't be able to save edits to the file, unless they specifically enable editing. To turn it off again later, just repeat that process.

There are other ways to help protect the file from being edited. If the file is on OneDrive, you can change permissions for the file. If the file is on SharePoint, you can set up a library to require check-out.

In these cases, the Save a Copy command appears on the File menu instead. Do you use Save As a lot? However, when AutoSave is on, your changes are continually saved to the original. AutoSave appears in the upper-left corner, on the title bar, if you are an Microsoft subscriber, and you have the latest versions of Excel, Word, and PowerPoint for Windows installed.

Please note that if you have a work or school account, your administrator may control which version of Office you can install, and it may not be the latest version. See When do I get the newest features in Microsoft ? If you're not a subscriber, don't worry. There's still AutoRecover. AutoRecover helps protect files in case of a crash. If you reopen the file after a crash, a version of the file with your latest changes appears in a Document Recovery pane.

For more information on how to turn it on, see Help protect your files in case of a crash. If the file is saved to another location or if it hasn't been saved at all, yet , then AutoSave is disabled.

There are other reasons AutoSave could be disabled as well. Here are some common reasons for it to be disabled:. Your file is being synced by an older version of the OneDrive sync app.

If you are using Excel, and tried the above, you may have a file that contains features that are not supported by AutoSave. Do one or more of the following to enable it:. Turn off the Shared Workbook feature. This feature is an older method of sharing. It has many limitations, and has been replaced by co-authoring. Then delete the password and click OK. If you are opening a workbook snapshot from SharePoint, choose to open the file instead of the snapshot. Turn off the Refresh data when opening file setting on all tables and PivotTables in the file.

Then uncheck Refresh data when opening file. Every vote counts. Look in the Excel title bar to the right of the file name. A new dropdown appears next to the title. Open that dropdown, and choose See All Versions. When you open a previous version, you have a choice to use Save As to save the version as a separate file. Say that you open the OctoberBudget. You spend an hour entering November numbers in the file.

Once you discover your error, if you revert to a previous version, you will lose the hour of work. Open the workbook with the November figures on the other computer and save a copy as November. With the November numbers safe, return to your computer and use Manage Versions to go back to the original version of October.

For people who rarely use Co-Authoring with a workbook, having the global AutoSave always set to on will be very annoying. It just automatically saves, even with Autosave off. Actually, you can disable AutoSave permanently. You just have to do it by editing the Windows Registry. I wonder if the following scenario has anything to do with Excel:. A client gave me some test files.

I copied one to my development folder, made some changes to test a bit of code and then saved my copy. So, I deleted mine and copied the original to my development area. I had just read your article a week ago, so I came back to ask. I hope I am off-base, because otherwise, that means I no longer have control of Excel. Is Your Finance Function Agile? You can enable AutoSave as well as save auto-recover information i. Once done, this would be turned on for all the workbooks you work on that system.

Remember that AutoSave is only available for Office users. AutoSave now enables Excel users to share files and make changes in real-time. Also, you can see the version history and go back to any previous version if you want.

When you open an old file using version history, it will be opened as Read-Only and you can save it with a new name if you want. For example, if you start with an old file, work on it for 20 minutes and save a copy, you will have the old file as well as the new file with 20 minutes of latest work.

You can also get the version history options for Excel files with storage options such as Dropbox and Google Drive. These tools simply check if there have been any changes in the file and save the prior version. You can then go back to these versions if you want. Another option you can use is by having a simple VBA code in place that makes sure that your file is saved before you close it.