Lesson 29: How to use AutoRecover in Excel

Excel periodically save a copy of the Excel file. So, in this article, we will learn how to recover files that have never been saved and how to recover files that have been saved at least once.

If Excel crashes, it will display the Document Recovery Pane when you reopen Excel. Here is a quick way to restore the last autosave file.

How to use AutoRecover in Excel

File never saved

If you’ve never saved a file and you accidentally clicked Don’t Save below when you closed Excel (or Excel crashes), take the following steps to restore the last autosaved file.

Note: Excel will tell you if a recent copy is still available.

First, click on the File tab and select Info.

Next, select Manage Workbook -> Recover Unsaved Workbooks.

Click the last auto-archived file.

Saved at least once

If you’ve never saved a file and you accidentally clicked Don’t Save below when you closed Excel (or Excel crashes), take the following steps to restore the last autosaved file.

Note: Excel will tell you if a recent copy of the file is still available.

First, open the Excel file.

On the File tab, click Info.

In Manage Workbook, click on the last autosaved file.

Version of the file

When you are working on Excel, Excel saves all the files that were automatically saved in the Manage Workbook.

On the File tab, select Info.

At any time, you can revert to a previous version of the Excel file.

Note: Excel will delete all previously autosaved files when you close the Excel file.

Other options

To change options in AutoRecoverperform the following steps.

On the File tab, click Options -> Save.

Note: you can set to save AutoRecover information every x minutes, or change the location of the AutoRecover file, etc.

In addition, you can also view many other excel articles here.