Excel: Restore unsaved file - is it possible?

From time to time, Excel may crash before you can save your document or you may accidentally close the program. Fortunately, Microsoft has equipped Excel with a recovery feature through which you can often salvage your lost data.

How to use Excel's recovery feature

You can often recover unsaved files using Excel's recovery feature. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Start Excel and click on the "File" item in the menu.
2. Then select the "Information" category.
3. Click on the "Manage workbook" button and select the "Restore unsaved workbooks" option.
4. A window will open in which you will find an overview of all workbooks that can be restored. Select the desired workbook and click "Open".

Enable automatic saving - here's how to proceed

To avoid losing data in case of crashes or other problems, you can enable automatic saving in Excel. If the function is enabled, Excel saves the open file independently at specified intervals.

1. Open Excel and call up the options.
2. Switch to the "Save" category.
3. Activate the checkboxes at the options "AutoRestore information every X minutes" and "Keep the last automatically restored version when closing without saving".

By default, the time interval for the automatic backup is set to 10 minutes. If you decrease the time, the data will be backed up more often and the restore files will contain more information accordingly. Geringe Speicherintervalle können allerdings zu Performance-Einbußen führen.