Finding AutoRecovery / Autosave in Word 2013

Thanks! The second part was very helpful for me when Word crashed and failed to open Document Recovery upon restart.

-Ryan

Is there a way to know the intervals of the auto save feature? Does it auto save after 2 minutes? 1? A setting to check this seems unavailable or I am looking in the wrong place.

Thanks in advance!

In MS Word 2013, go to File tab --> Options tab --> Save tab --> tick the following checkboxes

1. Checkbox "Save recovery information every [specified time interval]"; AND
2. Checkbox "Keep the last autosaved version if I close without saving"; remember
3. Note the file location of the "autorecover file location" for convenient control measures.
4. Consider upload to OneDrive or save drafts as pdf as additional control measures.

We've had the exact same problem, but neither auto-save or auto-recovered worked:

Had a Client just lost half a day's work in Word 2013. She had saved a version last night.

Today her system just froze and she had to close down Word in Task Manager.

I've just checked and the last saved version was last night.

She hadn't saved at all today, I know she should have but she didn't.

I just checked in Word and the autorecover settings were set to 10 mins as per default, ie:

Save AutoRecover Info every 10 mins = Checked

Keep the last autosaved version if I close without saving = Checked.

I've just checked it on my system using Word 2010 and it doesn't seem to work either:

1) Create new word file, save.

2) Add text, wait 11 minutes

3) Close Word via Task Manager

4) Re-open Word and it has the originally saved file from 11 minutes ago.

But no recently saved file from the 10 minute mark, I then go the the autosave location:

C:\Users\dellxps\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Word

and there's a STARTUP folder in there, but no files?

What's going on?

Is there a way to make Word actually autosave a file normally at a certain interval, I vaguely remember this being a feature in older versions of Word?

Word offers two "automatic" options for saving and those are the ones you have already mentioned: "Save AutoRecover information every X minutes" and "Keep the last autosaved version if I close without saving." Note that none of these options can be used as replacement for manual saves.

What you can do is search your hard drive for any left-over AutoRecover files; these have the asd filename extension.

Word offers two "automatic" options for saving and those are the ones you have already mentioned: "Save AutoRecover information every X minutes" and "Keep the last autosaved version if I close without saving." Note that none of these options can be used as replacement for manual saves.

Thanks for the reply Stefan, but neither of these options seem to work if you close Word without saving via Task Manager.

I've tested this on 2 machines, Word 2013 and Word 2010.

Try my test:

1) Create new word file, save.

2) Add text, wait 11 minutes

3) Close Word via Task Manager

4) Re-open Word and it has the originally saved file from 11 minutes ago

However it does not have the added text entered after the last save.

No asd files in the Unsaved Folder, no relevant file in the the AutoRecovery Folder.

So if your machine crashes, or freezes, then these recovery systems are of no use.

I note that you say:

"Note that none of these options can be used as replacement for manual saves."

I'm not sure what that means, either they aut-recover or auto-save or they don't.

In the 2 systems I've tested so far it seems they don't :(

What you can do is search your hard drive for any left-over AutoRecover files; these have the asd filename extension.

We did that and there's nothing anywhere.

Best wishes, Martin

The C:\Users\dellxps\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Word\STARTUP folder is NOT the place where the auto-recovery information is saved.  That folder is the location for template based Add-ins.

To recover a file that was being worked on when the Word application closes in an abnormal fashion, after re-starting Word, go to File>Info>Manage Versions>Recover Unsaved Documents.

The "autosave" options offer some extra precaution if Word crashes. However, you need to create true backups of your files.

If I create a new document, type a sentence, close the document and click No when prompted to save it, I can open it again via File | Info | Manage Versions | Recover Unsaved Documents (as Doug suggested). As far as I know, this procedure only works for unnamed files, that is, files that have never been saved to disk.

Forcing a shutdown of Word should preserve the most recent AutoRecover file. Try searching for the file, if you can't find it in the expected location.

Again, I wouldn't trust the AutoRecover function for backups.

The C:\Users\dellxps\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Word\STARTUP folder is NOT the place where the auto-recovery information is saved.  That folder is the location for template based Add-ins.

To recover a file that was being worked on when the Word application closes in an abnormal fashion, after re-starting Word, go to File>Info>Manage Versions>Recover Unsaved Documents.

Hi Doug,

The folder location is the one that is used by Word by default:

In that folder there is a STARTUP Folder.

As for the unsaved files they are nowhere to be found under

or anywhere on the computer.

The "autosave" options offer some extra precaution if Word crashes. However, you need to create true backups of your files.

I know this, it's the user asking me "why doesn't autorecover work"

To which I have no answer...

If I create a new document, type a sentence, close the document and click No when prompted to save it, I can open it again via File | Info | Manage Versions | Recover Unsaved Documents (as Doug suggested). As far as I know, this procedure only works for unnamed files, that is, files that have never been saved to disk.

That might explain why there are no unsaved files, she had already saved the file the day before.

Forcing a shutdown of Word should preserve the most recent AutoRecover file. Try searching for the file, if you can't find it in the expected location.

We looked everywhere, no luck.

In my own testing if Word freezes and you have to close it via Task Manager, then AutoRecover does not work.

Again, I wouldn't trust the AutoRecover function for backups.

Again, I'm not using AutoRecover for backups, but I would like it to work, otherwise what's the point of it.

I'd rather have something like we had in older versions of programs where autosave actually worked.

You'd see a disk icon which would change colour once saved, and you'd see the progress bar whilst it was saving.

We have daily Macrium Backups for all files, plus Cloud Syncing in real time when a user saves the file.

It's when Word freezes and the user hasn't saved the file, that AutoRecover should work.

But doesn't.