Autorecovery in Word does not work

Question

Hello,

My Mac crashed and the word document I was working on was not autosaved when the laptop restarted (while I had the autosave function on). I am working from home so the internet was perfectly working.

In addition, when I located the autorecovered document in the folder the document wont open, I get a message that 'Word cannot open the file because the file format does not match the file extension.' I was reviewing the document so I want to see the comments and other revisions I was making, (that's why opening it in Notes makes no sense).  

Could you please give an advise on what to do? Also can you offer a practical and sustainable solution to this problem while working on Mac? I had this experience before and it is just outrageous not to be able to have the changes saved in your document everytime the computer crashes (in Windows I find it much easier).

Thank you.

Pan

Answer 1

There are two separate features which often are mistakenly referred to by the same terms but are decidedly different;

AutoSave is a relatively new feature which can be turned on/off by way of the toggle switch on the QAT. However, it works only when the file is saved to OneDrive or SharePoint... It does not function for files saved to local devices or files saved to other clouds or network drives. AutoSave saves to the the working file so all content should be there if you simply reopen it.

AutoRecover is an established feature which has been a part of Office software for years. Unfortunately, many people - including some 'Softies' - erroneously refer to it as auto save: It is not. It's intended purpose is to prevent data loss caused by critical failure of the software or the system if it possibly can. However, it is by no means 100% reliable & should not be depended on as a failsafe. AutoRecover does not save to the working file but maintains a temporary file which contains the changes made during the interval specified in Preferences. It fucntions only with files saved to local storage devices... It is not operational when working with a file saved to OneDrive or SharePoint & IMO is less effective when working with files saved to services such as iCloud, Google Drive, & some network storage devices.

Answer 2

Hi again,

Unfortunately, if corruption occurs while you are working on a document, and AutoRecover saves the document after the corruption occurred but before Word crashed, then the AutoRecover file itself is corrupt and is useless. That's the big flaw with this rudimentary recovery scheme. Only the most recently saved file is on your drive, and there is a pretty good chance it is corrupt.

Time Machine is a much more sophisticated version recovery tool. Time Machine allows you to recover both older copies of AutoRecovery files and older versions of the files themselves. 

Restore items backed up with Time Machine on Mac - Apple ...

Answer 3

Hi Charles

The add-in looks for a file called USER32, which does not exist, which causes it to error.

-Jim

Answer 4

Thanks, this is helpful. Any ideas why the autorecovered document wont open in Word? It is a docx. Ive tried everything from converting it to doc to opening in G Drive or trying opening it in Windows but nothing worked. I discovered two more files in the folder and they also cant     open. If autorecovered files cant open then why the function exists in the first place?

That leaves then only the choice of using Autosave as the only reliable choice I guess.

Answer 5

Hi Pan,

Thanks for using Microsoft products and posting in the community, I’m glad to offer help.

According to your description, please make sure you are trying to recover the document in the correct folder: /Users/<username>/Library/Containers/com.Microsoft/Data/Library/Preferences/AutoRecovery

Reference: Recover files in Office for Mac - Office Support

If the document failed to recover even though you are in the correct folder, I’m afraid there may be no way to recover it because everything was saved locally.

To prevent this from happening again, we’d like to suggest you use AutoSave to protect your documents, after saving the documents to your OneDrive or a SharePoint library, any chances will be saved to the cloud in real time, which is safer and easier to restore than saving locally. For more information, please refer to What is AutoSave?

We’re sorry for what happened, and I hope the above information can help you a little, and please feel free to let me know if you have any concerns, I’ll continue to help you.

Best Regards,

Arck