
Note that in order to use co-authoring, the spreadsheet must be stored in OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, or SharePoint Online, and you must be logged into your Office 365 account. Collaborate in real timeįor those who frequently collaborate with others, a welcome feature in Excel for Office 365 is real-time collaboration that lets people work on spreadsheets together from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. If AutoSave does save unwanted changes to a file, you can always use the Version History feature described above to roll back to an earlier version. Instead, Microsoft suggests opening the original file and immediately selecting File > Save a Copy (which replaces Save As when AutoSave is enabled) to create a new version. Be warned that doing this with AutoSave enabled will save your changes in the original file. Many people are used to creating new worksheets based on existing ones by opening the existing file, making changes to it, and then using Save As to save the new version under a different name, leaving the original file intact.

Using AutoSave may require some rethinking of your workflow. If you want AutoSave to be off for all files by default, select File > Options > Save and uncheck the box marked “AutoSave OneDrive and SharePoint Online files by default on Excel.”

To turn it off (or back on again) for a workbook, use the AutoSave button on the top left of the screen. xlsx workbooks stored in OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, or SharePoint Online. AutoRecover files are not designed to be saved when a logoff is scheduled or an orderly shutdown occurs.” And the files aren’t saved in real time, so you’ll likely lose several minutes of work even if all goes as planned.ĪutoSave is turned on by default in Excel for Office 365. In addition, Microsoft notes, “AutoRecover is only effective for unplanned disruptions, such as a power outage or a crash. It doesn’t always work, though – for example, if you don’t properly open Excel after the crash, or if the crash doesn’t meet Microsoft’s definition of a crash. AutoRecover doesn’t save your files in real time instead, every several minutes it saves an AutoRecover file that you can try to recover after a crash. xls format or files you save to your hard drive.ĪutoSave is a vast improvement over the previous the AutoRecover feature built into Excel. It won’t work with files saved in the older Excel. It only works only on documents stored in OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, or SharePoint Online.

It automatically saves your files for you, so you won’t have to worry about system crashes, power outages, Excel crashes and similar problems. If you’re worried that you’ll lose your work on a worksheet because you don’t constantly save it, you’ll welcome the new AutoSave feature. Of 2 Use AutoSave to provide a safety net as you work
