Forum Discussion
What happened to Auto-Save in Office 2016 for docs located in OneDrive for Business?
For a while I saw that Office 2016 had an auto-save toggle on documents that were stored online. I reinstalled my computer recently and reinstalled Office but that is now missing.
I'm on the first release channel and the version is currently 1705 build 8201.2025.
Was this removed? I did a bit of searching but didn't find the answer.
19 Replies
I was frustrated already for not being able to use the AutoSave switch in Excel that was working so fine in the begining and suddenly became dimmed and never worked again.
After a long time searching online for a fix, I finally chatted with a Microsoft Support Associate and he quicly accessed my laptop and made an update in my Office version and the AutoSave switch started working fine again and never failed since. It's been a week now.
It happenes i have found the fix i was after here;
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/4036334/how-to-disable-autosave-in-office-365-proplus
There is a registry key required for each application;
Microsoft Word:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Word\DontAutoSaveMicrosoft Excel:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Excel\DontAutoSaveMicrosoft PowerPoint:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\PowerPoint\DontAutoSaveThe DWORD value of 1 disables AutoSave.
Working on my Win 10 networked pc, i was able to add the entry to my registry and its disabled AutoSave permanently.
I am now working with my IT dept to roll it out as part of a group policy.
Hope this helps anyone with the same issue.
Thanks for the tip. It worked fine.
I was getting quite annoyed at this. For me, closing without saving is like one big undo key. I try a bunch of things and, if I don't like the way it looks, I just close without saving, reopen, and try something else. If I like it I press save. It is like a checkpoint and I want to decide where the checkpoints are.
We probably won't set it as a Group Policy because I think it could be quite useful for some people but I will make sure it is in our IT knowledgebase because I am sure there are other people like me who will contact our help desk to complain.
I lost auto save after the latest win 10 update.
Hi,
Autosave (for Excel) i think might be enabled only for 64-bit versions, and is automatically enabled for spreadsheets (xslx files only; older versions of Excel arent affected) saved in OneDrive/SharePoint online. We dont want autosave in my organisation, because when finance team work collaboratively they dont want to autosave every little thing they do. So we had to move the files back to disk (SAN) storage where its disabled. So you might want to check the bit version and excel version. There is however some info i found in Excel help that talks about the build versions. I have checked our build versions and though they're not the same, autosave is now disabled which is great news for us. I'm still looking into this.
AutoSave is disabled for OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, and SharePoint locations
Last updated: September 29, 2017
ISSUE
After opening a file saved in OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, or SharePoint that is synced using a sync client, you may experience that the AutoSave is incorrectly disabled or greyed out. Hovering over the AutoSave toggle, the tool tip will prompt you with the following message:
AutoSave Not Available. This file location doesn't support AutoSave. Save to OneDrive or SharePoint Online if you want to use AutoSave.
This issue impacts the Office 2016 August 2017 update, Version 1708 (Build 8431.2079) and later.
STATUS: FIXED
This issue is now fixed in Version 1708 (Build 8431.2094). To get the update immediately, open any Office 2016 app and choose File > Account > Update Options > Update Now.
If you are continuing to experience or have not updated yet, you can use the following workaround:
· Open the Office app, click on File > Open and navigate to the server location (OneDrive or SharePoint).
· Using a web browser, open the file directly from SharePoint or OneDrive where the file is stored.
Yep, issue corrected with current update.
I still have the buttom but it's dimmed. ???
Has there been any update to this feature? It is still missing in Word. I am using a document stored in Sharepoint. The old save icon with the arrows is there but not the AutoSave button.
The top-left autosave switch reappeared in Excel, but not in Word. These were both installed with the same online Office 365 installer--not separately. The autosave works in Excel for SharePoint/OneDrive docs. It used to work in Word, too, until I domain-joined my machine and logged in with an on-premises AD account.
AutoSave is available (only) in Excel and PowerPoint 2016 for Office 365 subscribers, at least according to this article: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/What-is-AutoSave-6d6bd723-ebfd-4e40-b5f6-ae6e8088f7a5
Good catch - however, the switch also appears in Word under some conditions (which are unclear to me at this point).
Hi Chris. I'm on the same build, 8201.2025 on the Office Insider Fast ring.
I still have the AutoSave toggle switch in the top left corner and was using it yesterday. A couple of weeks ago, I noticed the feature disappear and come back again.
Hi Darrell,
Interesting. I hope someon can figure out what the change is because I really liked that feature.
What version of the OneDrive client are you running? Mine is 17.3.6816.0313.
Same OneDrive client as you. I don't think it relates to the OneDrive client.
I have two Office 365 accounts connected to Office. The primary being my work account and I have added another tenant as an additional storage location. Sometimes Office prompts me to log in again to the second tenant. I think before logging in again, the AutoSave toggle wasn't available. So it might be related to the Office 365 account you have signed into Office with, and whether the session has timed out. (I'm thinking out loud. But I could be way off the mark.)
