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Forum Discussion
How to autosave an excel file to Dropbox every 10 min
I just spent two hours on an excel file only to have excel crash before i saved it and lost my work. I am using MS Excel 97-2004 on a MacBook Pro and right now have to manually save all work. How ...
Hello slstewart249
There isn't a way for Dropbox to do this but as I understand it there is an auto-save feature in Microsoft Excel. I believe most versions have this. Take a look at this article https://support.office.com/en-us/article/use-autosave-and-autorecover-to-help-protect-your-files-in-case-of-a-crash-551c29b1-6a4b-4415-a3ff-a80415b92f99
or https://www.justanswer.com/computer/1ay5s-turn-off-autosave-feature-excel.html
Hopes this helps
Chris_J
Super User
Super UserHello slstewart249
There isn't a way for Dropbox to do this but as I understand it there is an auto-save feature in Microsoft Excel. I believe most versions have this. Take a look at this article https://support.office.com/en-us/article/use-autosave-and-autorecover-to-help-protect-your-files-in-case-of-a-crash-551c29b1-6a4b-4415-a3ff-a80415b92f99
or https://www.justanswer.com/computer/1ay5s-turn-off-autosave-feature-excel.html
Hopes this helps
Chris,
The problem is that Excel automatically turns off (and greys out) the auto-save function when saving to Dropbox. So there's no way to enable auto-save when saving to Dropbox.
Is anyone at Dropbox aware of this issue and working with Microsoft to resolve?
It's possible Microsoft does this to encourage people to save to OneDrive instead of Dropbox.- Rich
Super User II
D L.5 wrote:
The problem is that Excel automatically turns off (and greys out) the auto-save function when saving to Dropbox. So there's no way to enable auto-save when saving to Dropbox.
If you're referring to auto-saving directly to your Dropbox account then it's very likely that Microsoft prevents that as a way to force OneDrive use. There are even topics on Microsoft's forums that discuss this, and the usual answer is to use OneDrive.
However, the auto-save feature just needs a folder on your computer, and you can easily specify your local Dropbox folder. Any files that are auto-saved to the Dropbox folder are then synced like any other file would be. I have my local Dropbox specified as the auto-save location in Excel and it's never been an issue.
Hey
A bit after the event, but MS appears to have removed the "File, Save, Options" functions from the menu now and no comparable Option in "Preferences" on the Macbook - anyone know where this function has been moved to to permit Customising where MS Files can be saved to know other than in OneDrive (which sucks for long file names)?
I think your hypothesis is correct. Microsoft Word will also not autosave anywhere except to Onedrive or Sharepoint.
"We are the Borg. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is futile."
It appears that Autosave for any location that is not OneDrive or Sharepoint has been removed from recent versions of Office.
This is a shame. It means Dropbox loses out to OneDrive in a very important way.
AutoRecover is still there, but does not save versions and is really only a one-shot, one-chance safety net.
The Autosave feature that will autosave files to OneDrive and Sharepoint hosted files works a treat.
I much prefer Dropbox for a variety of reasons, but this one feature is a must have.
One caveat: carefully check the preferences in your application. I don't know why, but my version of Word for Mac v. 16.37 will autosave ONLY to something called "Onedrive," I haven't had the problem before, but after a couple of hours of work earlier today, Word threw away my edited file. I tried to find prior versions in Dropbox to fall back to. No luck. Only the file I saved prior to the edits was there. It doesn't appear that Word will easily set "auto-save" and "recover" files to Dropbox. I am going to have to find a work-around before I invest too much more time editing. I switched to Mac in order to have as little as possible to do with Microsoft. Looks like the Borg is going to assimilate me after all.
