Excel 97 autosave / recover?

[Fitz76]

Hi!

Is there a way to autosave in excel97? I know that in Word97 there is a way but in excel I haven't found that option yet =(

 

[cheerio]

If I remember correctly Excel autosave works rather differently.

With Word, a special copy of the file is made at regular intervals. When you close the document or exit Word normally then that special copy is deleted. If Word crashes or you get a loss of power the special copy is not deleted and is found next time you start Word which then shows it as a recovered file.

With Excel, if my memory is correct, the addin simply forces a file save at regular intervals. Although this may be beneficial it means that if you were trying out ideas with the intention of not saving them they will be saved anyway. Also saving a file clears the undo buffer - you can only ever undo back as far as the last save. So if you have just made a horrible error and are about to undo when autosave kicks in you will be in trouble.

I used autosave in earlier versions of Excel and found the disadvantages outweighed the advantages. However, it might be of value if Excel is simply being used as a data entry tool as it forces the saving of the data.

As hard disks are so cheap, the ideal would be for the saves to be made to different names in sequence myfile001.xls, myfile002.xls, ... Then at least you could get back to a version before your major error.

 

[Fitz76]

Thanks =)

 

[krinid]

I, too, have been looking to find a good way to utilize autosave in Excel and get around its limitations (as listed above), but have been unsuccessful. If you find a good way, let us know.

 

[plantj]

It's very low tech but the solution I use is to press Ctrl-S often.

 

[krinid]

plantj,
haha, yea, that's what I've ended up using. Unfortunately, that clears the undo buffer as well.