Solved Excel Documents - Recovery Message

[dougglos]

I have been using Excel to create spreadsheets for many years now, but suddenly, if I try to amend any of the data on a spreadsheet, I receive the following message (in a side pane) :- "Excel has recovered the following files. Save the one you wish to keep"!! And it shows the one I am working on, plus the last saved version of it. Previously if I wanted to amend any of my figures, etc., I would simply do so and click the "save" button. I have no idea what has happened to alter this.

 

[Fireflycph]

Seems like the "Autorecover" function is misbehaving. Since I have no clue as to which version of Excel you use, here's a "generic" link that tells you hav to configure it.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/289273/description-of-the-autorecover-functions-in-excel

 

[dougglos]

Followed your link as above, changed the suggested path from the existing one, and entered the default location as given. Received the following error message re the Auto-Recover File Location:

"Cannot access directory: C:\Documents and Settings\My user name\Application Data\Microsoft\Excel\ "

Is there anywhere I can go from there?

 

[dougglos]

Sorry - follow up to my last post:-

The path was previously showing as : C:\Users\My user name\ App Data\Roaming\ Excel\

I don't know if this helps??

 

[Fireflycph]

Not really. "Documents and Settings" was the default for WIndows XP. Since Vista, I believe, it's been "Users"
Can you disable the autosave? Just as a test?

 

[dougglos]

Disabled it as suggested - no success, so just enabled it again.

 

[dvk01]

It looks like you are trying to save a changed file to the file recovery location.
By default Excel should block direct save by a user to that location, which should only be permitted by the system user ( excel).
open an excel spreadsheet that you want to change, make a small change & use "save as" to save to your user /docs folder. Firstly save it under a different file name for example file_1.xls
so you have a safe copy, just in case. Then save the original again using "save as" and select the original file

otherwise do a repair of excel / office to fix any corruption
open programs & settings / select Microsoft Office & right click it , select change & then the appropriate repair option. Try quick repair first, if that doesn't work then select the full online repair, which might take a reasonably long time

 

[dougglos]

To explain what happened originally - I had a simple Excel spreadsheet (Names and Addresses of friends) and I had to make a very small amendment to something on that spreadsheet. The following print screen was the result, showing the strange left-hand pane :-

View attachment 264554

I had amended items many times before without problems, so could not understand why this was happening - I still do not! I am very inexperienced in computing and am afraid I am not able to follow all your suggestions. Suffice to say that I have managed to get that particular spreadsheet saved back to where it was originally, and will have to leave it at that I'm sorry to say - suffice that I still have my list of names and addresses, and will probably raise a new list in due course, hoping that I will not encounter the same problem. In the meantime thank you for your input, but it is all beyond my ability to attempt to correct it.

 

[dvk01]

I have deleted the attachment because it contains private information that I am sure loads of people in the list would not want published on a public forum