How to autosave an excel file to Dropbox every 10 min

[slstewart249]

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.

[Chris_J · Accepted solution]

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-...

or https://www.justanswer.com/computer/1ay5s-turn-off-autosave-feature-excel.html

Hopes this helps

[D L.5]

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]

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@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.

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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.

[D L.5]

Thanks Rich.  Your solution seemed perfect... unfortunately, it didn't change anything.  The AutoSave switch is still greyed out.

[Rich]

Then I'd suggest that there's something else preventing it. The Dropbox folder is just a folder like any other. Can you select a folder elsewhere on your computer?

[D L.5]

It appears I somehow integrated Dropbox and Excel. A floating Dropbox logo appears on the right side of my workbook. Apparently this is to allow multiple people to work on the spreadsheet (trying to keep up with the functionality available in Google Sheets for years?)
That said, I haven’t found a way to disable it yet.

[Rich]

The floating Dropbox logo is the Dropbox Badge. It doesn't allow simultaneous editing, but does alert you when others are in the document and it allows you to load the latest changes if any, among other things. Simultaneous editing is possible and has been for a long time through the Dropbox website (the same way Google Docs does it).

This feature wouldn't have anything to do with the Dropbox integration in Office, if you have that. That would have been accomplished by adding Dropbox as a Place within Office.

Have you tried to select a folder outside of Dropbox yet, just as a test to see if Auto-save will work at all?

[slstewart249]

How do I get to the page where I can customized workbooks are saved and select a folder?   I can't find how to get to a page that looks like the screenshot below.  Thanks

[D L.5]

@slstewart249 wrote:

How do I get to the page where I can customized workbooks are saved and select a folder?   I can't find how to get to a page that looks like the screenshot below.  Thanks

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Click on "File" (in the upper left)  => "Options" => "Save"