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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 can I set up MS Excel/Word/PPT to auto save every 10 minutes to my Business's Dropbox account? I want to be able to work without having to manually save my file every few minutes.
Thanks.
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
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And for extra measure, here's a screenshot showing the greyed out AutoSave option:
- Chris_J
Super User alumni
Have you tried re-installing Microsoft Ecel?
- not yet. Will I lose all my settings?
- Rich
Super User II
Ok, we seem to be confusing two separate features. AutoSave (as shown in your screenshot), and the feature that automatically saves files every 10 minutes for file recovery.
The feature you're referring to does not work with local folders. It can only be enabled and used with OneDrive, OneDrive for Business or Sharepoint Online.
- Ohhhhh. Thanks. I guess that solves the mystery. I thought the feature that automatically saves files every 10 minutes was turned off. I've lost too much data in the past to leave that off :)Thanks for the help and sorry for the confusion.
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.
HI, I am also having trouble with this part. I am running Word 2011. I have word => preferences => save (but other than changing the number of minutes before autosaving, there is no section on choosing the folder to save to) - any help much appreciated
- Rich
j2scott50 wrote:
I am running Word 2011. I have word => preferences => save (but other than changing the number of minutes before autosaving, there is no section on choosing the folder to save to) - any help much appreciated
You really should ask this on a Microsoft forum as it's their application and feature, and they would know how to best assist you. My best guess though is that since you're on a Mac, the feature works differently than is does on Windows. You need to ask Microsoft.
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.
