Office 2011 for Mac - Excel autosave problems

Hi

I have Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 and have started having a problem with the autosave function for Excel documents. I have the preferences set to autosave after a few minutes each excel document but am finding that some ( not all ) excel documents are asking me to save them ( when left open in the bottom bar of the Imac ) on closing down the computer. It is strange as some documents never ask to be saved and autosave seems to function perfectly. Others ask to be saved on close down every day.

Has anyone had this problem too and found a solution?

Are the ones that ask to be saved ones that you have edited since the autosave by chance?

No because I normally save each document before putting it down on the bottom bar.

Are the documents in question based on a template? Originally created as an Excel template? I think that format asks you to save any time the document is closed.

Known problem with Office 2011. Autosave is broken and has been broken ever since Microsoft deployed Office 2011. Do not depend on autosave for Word, Excel, or Powerpoint. Save your documents often and make sure that you choose "Always make a backup" in Office 2011 preferences. You can read more about the broken autosave function by going to the Microsoft Office forums. The autosave function in Office 2016, Office 365 should work better.

Thanks for that reminder Charlie. Not sure if I never knew that or had forgotten it. I've never really liked depending upon any program's autosave feature for anything important.

BTW Suppose someone creates a new document and does the initial save. They then continue to work on the document but have not done a second save (manually or by autosave). If a time machine backup occurs does it have just the saved version of the file or does it have the info from the open file? I think it would have the saved version only and none of the info since the file was last saved.

I don't think Time Machine can save an open file (maybe it can) so I would think that the last time the file was saved is what it will save. However, if you choose "always make a backup" from Office preferences, then every time the file is accessed it will be backed up and saved. Just make sure you direct the backup saves to a place where you can find them. I have mine going to the "Documents" folder. This is what it looks like:

"Backup of Father's Day.docx"

Every time I edit the file, (Father's Day.docx) a new backup version of it will be saved over the top of the previous one. That is the only thing that works right with the autosave function in Office 2011.

Thank you to you all for your informative replies to mu inquiry. I will take them all onboard. I have to say its the illogical thing about it happening with some but not all excel documents which puzzles me most. I do normally save each document before reducing it to the bar and yet they still need to be saved again on closing down the imac.

Is Office 2011 up to date, current version is 14.7.5?

chscag said:

Known problem with Office 2011. Autosave is broken and has been broken ever since Microsoft deployed Office 2011. Do not depend on autosave for Word, Excel, or Powerpoint. Save your documents often and make sure that you choose "Always make a backup" in Office 2011 preferences. You can read more about the broken autosave function by going to the Microsoft Office forums. The autosave function in Office 2016, Office 365 should work better.

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I'm also having problems with Autosave with Office 2011, so I just found this thread and saw you suggestion about making sure to choose "Always make a backup" in Office 2011 preferences, but I don't know how to get to that choice. Could you please tell me the steps on my mac to get to choose 'always make a backup'? I found excel preferences but not Office 2011 preferences. Where do I find them? Thank you very much, Hopper

"Always choose to make a backup" is only available when you open Microsoft Word, Preferences, Save. That will ensure a backup copy is always made when editing a Word document. As far as I'm aware, there are no similar settings for Powerpoint or Excel other than the "Autosave" feature which is unreliable.

There are no basic MS Office preferences. Sorry about the confusion.

Just make sure you have a backup copy of any Excel sheet you create. You can do that easily enough by using the "Save As" feature and applying a different name to the sheet. It's more work but it's a lot safer than depending on the broken autosave feature.

harryb2448 said:

Is Office 2011 up to date, current version is 14.7.5?

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I just thought I should mention that my MS Office 2011 shows Word and Excel at version 14.7.7 and was last modified August 28 2018.

If I recall correctly, I ended up having to do about three consecutive updates but the last one I had to do manually and download it as no auto update showed that anything was available.





- Patrick
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Same here as Patrick. 14.7.7 is the latest and last update to MS Office. The autoupdater has been replaced several times with a newer version but that also applies to other versions of Office.