Excel now allows auto-saving files every few seconds. Here are the steps to turn on autosave in Excel to save files automatically.
For working on spreadsheets, there is no other application or web tool that can compete with Excel. One of the biggest strengths of Excel is its sea of options and wide compatibility. From the simplest things like data entry to complex things like graphs and data manipulation, Excel can do it all without hiccups.
As good and feature-rich as Excel is, there is one important feature missing for all these years. That is Excel AutoSave. Excel users have been asking for the autosave feature for a long time now. In fact, I’ve seen support treads dating as far back as a decade. Without an autosave feature, you have to remember to constantly save the file. Though not a big deal for most, constantly pressing the Ctrl + S shortcut can be a pain in the back at times. If you forgot to save the file, you might lose precious data in the event of an application or system crash.
After all these years, Microsoft finally implemented the AutoSave feature in the newest version of Excel. All you have to do is enable autosave in Excel and it will do the saving for you.
In this quick and simple Excel how-to guide, let me show you the steps to turn on autosave in Excel.
Important note: You should be using Office 365 to use Excel autosave feature. If you are using Excel 2031/2016/2019, etc., you will not see the autosave option.
Turn on autosave in Excel
To turn on autosave in Excel, follow the steps given below.
- Open Excel.
- Click on “File.”
- Click on “Options.”
- Select the “Save” tab on the sidebar.
- Select the “AutoSave OneDrive and SharePoint online files by default on Excel” checkbox.
- Click “OK.”
- With that, autosave is fully enabled in Excel.
First, open an Excel file of your choice. After that, click on the “File” option on the Ribbon menu. From the File menu, select “Options” from the sidebar.
In the “Options” window, select the “Save” tab on the sidebar. Here, select the “AutoSave OneDrive and SharePoint online files by default on Excel” checkbox and then click on the “Ok” button.
That is it. From now on, the excel files will be automatically saved to OneDrive in real-time. i.e, every few seconds.
Cannot see autosave option in Excel
The autosave option is only available for Office 365 users. If you are using any other version, like Office 2013, 2016, 2019, etc., you will not see the autosave option. For whatever reason, Microsoft chose not to implement the autosave feature in other versions of Office.
That is all. It is that simple to enable autosave in Excel.
I hope that helps. If you are stuck or need some help, comment below and I will try to help as much as possible.
If you like this article, check out how to pin individual Excel files to the taskbar and how to open multiple links at once from Excel.
