Some of the documents listed may have been saved by the user without any subsequent changes being made and will have "Version created last time the user saved the file" beneath the file name as shown above. Note: if you can't see the entire message, move the mouse pointer to the right edge of the recovery pane where it butts against the numbered rows of an open spreadsheet, as shown by the red arrow below, which should change the mouse pointer to a double-headed arrow and allow you to pull the edge of the recovery pane to the right so that you can see all of the text in the recovery pane.
For those files that were saved by the user, you can just click on them to reopen them and then close them, which will remove the file from the document recovery pane.
Where does Excel store the recovery files? You can see the location in
the Office 365
version of Excel by clicking on File and then More and
choosing Options. Then select Save from the Options
window. To the right of "AutoRecover file location, you will see the
location where Excel creates the autorecover files. You will also see the
frequency with which Excel automatically saves open files on this window.
By default Excel will store the automatically saved files at
C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel\,
where username is the account name for the logged on user, but you can
change the location on this window, if you wish.
Note: the directory path C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\
corresponds to the
environment variable %appdata%, so you can
substitute that variable name when issuing a command referencing that
directory path at a command prompt
or put it in the address bar of the Windows
File Explorer.
C:\Users\Tork>echo %appdata%
C:\Users\Tork\AppData\Roaming
C:\Users\Tork>dir %appdata%\Microsoft\Excel
Volume in drive C is Local Disk
Volume Serial Number is AEB0-91D8
Directory of C:\Users\Tork\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel
03/20/2024 12:59 PM <DIR> .
03/15/2024 08:13 PM 23,146 2024 To-Do List (version 1).xlsb
03/03/2024 11:51 PM 8,372 Book3 (version 1).xlsb
03/15/2024 08:47 PM <DIR> Daily%20Activities310925301458756064
03/20/2024 10:52 AM <DIR> Daily%20Activities310953100866859392
03/15/2024 08:13 PM 138,909 Goals (version 1).xlsb
03/15/2024 08:13 PM <DIR> Goals310921681858478314
03/03/2024 11:38 PM 10,938 invoice_24001 (version 1).xlsb
03/20/2024 12:58 PM <DIR> XLSTART
4 File(s) 181,365 bytes
5 Dir(s) 924,135,518,208 bytes free
C:\Users\Tork>
In the file list above, the Collectorz_Book_Updates.xlsx [Original]
and Articles.xlsx [Original] spreadsheets do not appear as
they were saved by the user with no subsequent updates to them before the system
lost power, so I can just open and close them to remove them from being listed
in the recovery pane. They were in the pane because they were still open in
Excel when the system lost power.
For some files listed in the recovery pane, you may see multiple entries.
E.g., in the example below, there is a Goals.xlsx [Original]
which is a document that was saved on March 9 by the user. There is also a
Goals (version 1).xlsb which is a version created by Excel when
it performed an automatic save to create a recovery file for changes made by
the user after the document was saved by the user on March 9.
If I look in Excel's document recovery directory, I see the following:
C:\Users\Tork>dir %appdata%\Microsoft\Excel
Volume in drive C is Local Disk
Volume Serial Number is AEB0-91D8
Directory of C:\Users\Tork\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel
03/18/2024 09:16 PM <DIR> .
03/15/2024 08:13 PM 23,146 2024 To-Do List (version 1).xlsb
03/03/2024 11:51 PM 8,372 Book3 (version 1).xlsb
03/15/2024 08:47 PM <DIR> Daily%20Activities310925301458756064
03/15/2024 08:13 PM 138,909 Goals (version 1).xlsb
03/15/2024 08:13 PM <DIR> Goals310921681858478314
02/27/2024 09:22 PM 110,653 GVP_Volcano_List_Holocene (version 1).xlsb
03/03/2024 11:38 PM 10,938 invoice_24001 (version 1).xlsb
5 File(s) 292,018 bytes
3 Dir(s) 924,035,649,536 bytes free
C:\Users\Tork>dir %appdata%\Microsoft\Excel\Goals310921681858478314
Volume in drive C is Local Disk
Volume Serial Number is AEB0-91D8
Directory of C:\Users\Tork\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel\Goals310921681858478314
03/15/2024 08:13 PM <DIR> .
03/20/2024 08:58 PM <DIR> ..
03/15/2024 02:58 PM 138,908 Goals((Autorecovered-310945051069723807)).xlsb
03/15/2024 03:21 PM 138,910 Goals((Autorecovered-310945081880042328)).xlsb
03/15/2024 04:09 PM 138,908 Goals((Autorecovered-310945150395694437)).xlsb
03/15/2024 07:36 PM 138,911 Goals((Autorecovered-310945440432498232)).xlsb
03/15/2024 08:13 PM 138,909 Goals((Autorecovered-310945491307331324)).xlsb
03/03/2024 08:18 PM 1,695 Goals.xlsx.lnk
6 File(s) 696,241 bytes
2 Dir(s) 925,599,178,752 bytes free
C:\Users\Tork>I can see that Goals (version 1).xlsb [AutoRecovered] was last
updated on March 15, six days later than the save of the file by the user. I
can open it and choose "save as" and overwrite the Goals.xlsk
file at the original location with the autosaved file.
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