Forum Discussion

Chris Parker's avatar
Chris Parker
Iron Contributor
Jun 06, 2017

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 firs...
microsoft 365 apps
office 365
onedrive
Luladrao's avatar
Luladrao
Copper Contributor
Oct 15, 2017

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.

  • Olabiyi Akinosun's avatar
    Olabiyi Akinosun
    Copper Contributor
    Oct 17, 2017

    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\DontAutoSave

    Microsoft Excel:
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Excel\DontAutoSave

    Microsoft PowerPoint:
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\PowerPoint\DontAutoSave

    The 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.

    • John Twohig's avatar
      John Twohig
      Iron Contributor
      Oct 20, 2017

      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.

      • Eric Parker's avatar
        Eric Parker
        Copper Contributor
        Jan 01, 2018

        Autosave had stopped on my PC and after searching high and low for an answer it occurred to me where the problem might be. Microsoft had tried several times to install update 1709 on my computer which kept failing. I got tired of the constant reminders to reboot my computer for an update that didn't work so I went into the Services.msc and disabled Windows Update. Everything was fine for a while  but then Autosave stopped working. Apparently Windows Update was causing Autosave to fail because when I enabled Windows Update, Autosave started working again. Like a giant chess game!

Resources