AutoRecover doesn’t recover

[RossBarkman]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

Although I have AutoRecover enabled and set to save a copy every 10 minutes, no Excel files ever appear in the Office 2008 AutoRecovery folder (I do get PowerPoint and Word files in there). If I have a crash (Excel-specific or system), Excel does not recover my work, though it does re-open the last manually saved version of each file.

There are no useful messages in the Console, though I constantly get "Microsoft Excel[pid]: CGBitmapContextGetData: invalid context". However, Word keeps logging the same message, and its AutoRecover works fine.

 

[RossBarkman]

So, I've updated to 12.1.2, which actually involved a complete reinstall of Office - still no AutoRecover. I've trashed the com.microsoft.Excel.plist file & re-set my prefs - I still get no files in the Office 2008 AutoRecovery folder.

Watching the Excel status bar, it does briefly flash 'AutoRecovery save in progress" or something like that (it's almost too fast to see), but no new files are saved anywhere that I can find - I've checked using the Finder to search for recently created files, both visible & invisible.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

So, I've updated to 12.1.2, which actually involved a complete reinstall of
Office - still no AutoRecover. I've trashed the com.microsoft.Excel.plist
file & re-set my prefs - I still get no files in the Office 2008 AutoRecovery
folder.

Watching the Excel status bar, it does briefly flash 'AutoRecovery save in
progress" or something like that (it's almost too fast to see), but no new
files are saved anywhere that I can find - I've checked using the Finder to
search for recently created files, both visible & invisible.

This probably won't be particularly helpful, but for me, Autorecover
creates an invisible file in the Office 2008 Autorecovery folder
starting with

~ar

followed by a 4 byte hex (alphanumeric) value, with no extension.

If I then force a crash, XL recovers the autorecover file, and
immediately renames the AR file (still invisible) to

filename (version 1).xls(x)

and creates another small invisible file named

~filename (version 1).xls(x)



When you did your complete reinstall, did you start by running Remove
Office?

And have you reset disk permissions with the Disk Utility app?

 

[RossBarkman]

This probably won't be particularly helpful, but for me, Autorecover

creates an invisible file in the Office 2008 Autorecovery folder
starting with

~ar

followed by a 4 byte hex (alphanumeric) value, with no extension.

No invisible files starting with a ~ are created, either in Office 2008 AutoRecovery or elsewhere. However, Word does create visible AutoRecover files in that folder.

When you did your complete reinstall, did you start by running Remove
Office?

No, I didn't; the instructions for resolving the problem (inability to install 12.1.2) were just to delete the Office 2008 folder and re-install, then apply all the necessary updates - that procedure worked, and I am now running 12.1.2. However, the problem has been occurring since I originally installed Office 2008.

I'm prepared to use the Remove Office app and try again - as long as you can confirm that doing so will not delete Office 2004 or my Microsoft User Data folder (particularly my Entourage database). 'Uninstall' apps can be a bit brutal at times...

And have you reset disk permissions with the Disk Utility app?

Yes - no relevant permissions fixed, and the problem is still there.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

I'm prepared to use the Remove Office app and try again - as long as you can
confirm that doing so will not delete Office 2004 or my Microsoft User Data
folder (particularly my Entourage database). 'Uninstall' apps can be a bit
brutal at times...

Remove Office will give you the option of which version(s) to delete -
and will not touch your MUD folder.

It won't delete anything from Office 2004, though the 2004 version of
Remove Office sometimes removed support files from earlier versions
(e.g., 98, 2001, v.X).

Take a look here if you want to use belt and suspenders first:

http://entourage.mvps.org/install/remove_office.html

 

[RossBarkman]

OK, did a Remove Office and a reinstall & re-update - and we have a change of symptoms. AutoRecovery now works for files that have been saved at least once - but it doesn't work for "Workbook x" files that have never been saved.

Excel says it is doing an AutoRecovery save of "Workbook x". If I force-quit Excel and reopen it, I get the error message:

Excel cannot open this file
The file might have been damaged or modified from its original format.

I used Activity Monitor to check what files it has open, and have found where it is hiding the AutoRecovery files: /private/var/folders/Ga/GaEkcAX9G2qBCR1Iwl3FuE+++TM/TemporaryItems/ I get invisible files in there with the "~ar..." format, as you described. There are also visible .xlsx files with hex names - I'm guessing those are unsaved "Workbook x" files. It does beg the question: what's the point of having an Office 2008 AutoRecovery folder if you're not going to use it...?

It is also writing some sort of temp file for each file I open into /Users/me/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/ - these have names like dftmpPFGEPMEMkkkkkkkk--------.

When I force-quite Excel, the ~ar... files stay there. When I start it up, it finds the AutoRecovery version of any existing file that I have modified and presents it to me for saving - but it doesn't like the unsaved "Workbook x". It then gets rid of the ~ar... files if I either save the recovered version or tell it to delete it. Strangely, when there were no ~ar... files left, I was still getting that "Excel cannot open this file" message multiple times. However, doing a clean quit out of Excel sorted that out

So, at least partial success - AutoRecovery is working, as long as I immediately save any new workbook I create. I just have to remember to do that, which is easier than remembering to manually save every workbook every 10 minutes!