Using the AutoRecover Feature In Office 2010

Ever had an Office program crash and then lost the entire project you were working on?  With Office 2010 that never has to happen again.  When you exit an Office 2010 application without saving, by default you’ll be prompted with a dialog window such as the one below.

If you don’t save your file, or your file crashes you’ll be able to still recover it later using the default Auto-Save features of Office 2010!

Note this feature only works for the following of the Office 2010 Applications:

• Microsoft Word 2010
• PowerPoint 2010
• Excel 2010

For this guide I’ll be using Microsoft Word 2010 so there will be a slight variation if you are using PowerPoint or Excel.

How To Recover An Office 2010 Document, Spreadsheet, or Presentation That Was Never Saved

1. In your office application, Click File > Recent and then at the bottom Click Recover Unsaved Documents.*

*The wording may be different depending on which Office application you are using.  For example, PowerPoint would say Presentations instead of Documents.

2. Select the document that you were last working on and didn’t save.  Looking at the Date modified can greatly aid you in finding the correct one.

3. When you open the unsaved file it will alert you at the top that this is an (Autosaved Version).  Also in the middle of the Document you will see a warning that you are currently in a Draft Version and if you don’t save the file it will be automatically deleted in 4 days.

That’s all there is to recovering unsaved Office 2010 docs.  Next we’ll look at recovering an Office 2010 file that had been saved once before, but the most recent version was never saved.

Recover Office 2010 Files That Were Previously Saved But Were Closed Without Saving

4. In the File > Recent tab you can find existing recent documents that have been worked in but not saved the last time they were exited.  Look for the (when I closed without saving) tag below the file name, this is the latest version that was auto-saved.

Revert To A Previous Version (AutoSave) Of An Office 2010 Document, Presentation, Or Spreadsheet

5. The Auto-Save part of Auto-Recover will automatically save your file at the specified time increments.  To revert back to one of these Auto-Saves, Click File > Info and then select a version by Clicking on the Timestamp near the Manage Versions button.

Note that previous auto-saved versions are typically deleted when you close the file.

6. You can adjust how often an Auto-save (AutoRecover) occurs, as well as where these temporary files will be stored.  Lets look at those, Click File > Options.

7. In the options menu Click the Save tab.  Here you can customize how many minutes between Auto-Saves and also the format and location that files are saved in.  I like to set mine for 3 minutes because once you get really going on something, 3 minutes of work is a pretty big deal to lose.

Overall AutoRecover is a groovy feature of Office 2010 under PowerPoint, Word, and Excel.  It has saved my butt a few times and hopefully now that you know how to use it it can help you and your colleagues!

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