Excel opens multiple "Last Saved By User" documents after crash.

Question

After Excel crashes, it asks if I'd like to reopen the last file that was open. When I do this, it opens dozens of old documents, all appended with "[Last Saved by User]" 

It takes several minutes for all these files to open. How do I stop this?

Thank you for your help.

Answer 1

Hi Abrokentenor,

Please first keep the Office to the latest version 15.41. Then please go to /Users/<username>/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Word/Data/Library/Preferences/AutoRecovery, check if there’s any files left there. Save all the files well before clearing them.

Then you can try the steps below to check if the AutoRecovery feature works well now:

1. Go to Excel> Preference > Save > Set the AutoRecovery period to 1 minute for testing purpose.
2. Create a new test workbook, save it first. Then wait for more than 1 minute, open Activity Monitor to force quit Excel app.
3. Re-launch Excel app to check the result.

If the issue persists, please provide us the information below:

1. What’s the Office version?
2. What’s the OS version?
3. When did the issue happen? Was there anything change before that?

Thanks,

Rena

Answer 2

The locations of AutoRecovery files are described in Excel Help. Search Excel help on the term AutoRecovery. The arcane location for these files is dictated to a certain degree by Apple.

Answer 3

I finally took the time to fix this, and it looks like it's all fine now. But why would my Excel Autorecovery files be under the Word container? My Word container has an Autorecovery folder but there's no such folder in /Users/<username>/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Excel

Answer 4

Hi Abrokentenor,

Have you tried any suggestions above? Please provide us any updates when you have time.

Thanks,

Rena

Answer 5

When Excel crashes it tries to save a copy of the current open workbooks into the AutoRecover location. Obviously, Excel was successful at doing this, as you are encountering those workbooks when re-opening Excel.

You can use File > Save As to save the recovered files. If you don't really want to keep those versions, give them a name like Junk, save them to your desktop, quit Excel and then throw them away.

To bypass opening the AutoSaved files altogether, hold the Shift key down as you click Excel's dock icon.