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Has Microsoft excel is trying to recover your information ever worked for anyone?

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    Forum Expert Sam Capricci's Avatar
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    Has Microsoft excel is trying to recover your information ever worked for anyone?

    The title says it all, not sure if this is a post for general or the water cooler (and admins feel free to move it) but...
    I can't tell the number of times I've "broken" Microsoft excel (though it isn't frequent) but I'll be in the middle of something and do something that might be bone headed and suddenly I get the pop up that "Microsoft excel is trying to recover your information..." and the bar scrolls and it says this might take several minutes.
    I've let it run for up to two hours before shutting it down.
    In this instance I had a graph I was in when I moved from the tab that the data was on and back to the graph tab and tried to use a dropdown that would change the numbers in the graph, OOPS. That did it, I forgot the graph was "open" and now I'm stuck in excel trying to recover...
    AND when I think about it I was dealing with graphs almost every other time I can remember this happening.

    So bottom line for me, if it does work I'm inclined to let it work but if it doesn't usually work instead of wasting time waiting on it I'll just shut it down and start over.
    Thoughts?
    Last edited by Sam Capricci; 01-11-2019 at 09:30 AM.
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    Forum Moderator AliGW's Avatar
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    Re: Has Microsoft excel is trying to recover your information ever worked for anyone?

    Don't think I've ever managed to upset Excel that much!
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    Forum Expert Sam Capricci's Avatar
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    Re: Has Microsoft excel is trying to recover your information ever worked for anyone?

    lucky you. wish I was that fortunate. Half an hour and still crossing my fingers.

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    Forum Moderator AliGW's Avatar
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    Re: Has Microsoft excel is trying to recover your information ever worked for anyone?

    Lordy!

    I have occasionally managed to corrupt a workbook, but the emergency save performed by Excel has always opened fine and I've been able to continue working without having to resort to a back-up file.

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    Forum Expert Sam Capricci's Avatar
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    Re: Has Microsoft excel is trying to recover your information ever worked for anyone?

    I'm shutting it down, I have two big reports to do today with a lot of graphs, pivot tables and dashboards and can't wait.
    BUT, I am still interested in hearing opinions about if you've had it happen did it ever recover or did you shut it down too? How long did it take?
    Thanks all.

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    Re: Has Microsoft excel is trying to recover your information ever worked for anyone?

    Sambo Kid,

    I feel your pain. This happened to me at least 3 times a week when I first started the project. I once left it overnight and 14 hours later when I cam back to work it was in the same condition so I killed the process. I only wait 10 minutes now, if it hasn't saved by then it I kill the process and pull one of my backups. I create backup copies every 15 minutes to get around this issue. I am running Excel 2000, not sure what version you are on.
    Bill

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    Forum Guru Kyle123's Avatar
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    Re: Has Microsoft excel is trying to recover your information ever worked for anyone?

    It works for me, though it doesn't ever work for VBA code. TBH I don't usually wait for it to finish, I kill it then open the workbook from the auto-recover locations

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    Forum Expert Sam Capricci's Avatar
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    Re: Has Microsoft excel is trying to recover your information ever worked for anyone?

    billfinnjr, thanks for your comment.
    I don't have it occur that often. I think I remember once it actually recovered the data and started up again but it seems to me all the other times I've had to shut it down, usually using the task manager.
    Wow, 14 hours and you still had to shut it down.
    our system usually does an auto save every 10 minutes but in this instance when I shut it down it gave me the option to open the original or autosaved version. I picked the autosaved version and then I can't save it without using save as. So I closed it again and opened the original, didn't take me that long to get it back to where I started.

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    Forum Expert Sam Capricci's Avatar
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    Re: Has Microsoft excel is trying to recover your information ever worked for anyone?

    Kyle123
    I think (as noted in post 8) it might have worked once for me but the other times, just waiting. If you saw it in my original post the ones I recall most are when I've activated (by clicking in it) a graph then I go to the data area feeding it, may make a change but forget I have the graph active then do something else which crashes excel. That is what I did this time, went back to the graph and while it was still active I clicked on a dropdown and BOOM!
    I think my lesson from now on is that I'll give it 5 to 10 minutes then kill it.
    thanks for your thoughts.

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    Re: Has Microsoft excel is trying to recover your information ever worked for anyone?

    I always kill it and just start from where I saved last. I usually save [very] frequently so this isn't a huge issue.

    I don't trust the recovered versions. Maybe from my lack of understanding about how they function.

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    Re: Has Microsoft excel is trying to recover your information ever worked for anyone?

    Sambo Kid
    I ended up turning off auto save based on some research after constant occurrences of my system hanging up when Excel was calculating. Based on using Excel 2000 and old hardware I decided to just email it to my home email address every ten minutes. It's a pain in the kiester but I don't lose work any more. A one point I had a system crash and IT brought in a backup copy of the file 2-3 weeks old and I had to redo all the work from that time period.
    Good luck, and if you ever figure out what is causing it please let me know!!
    Enjoy your weekend
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    Forum Expert Sam Capricci's Avatar
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    Re: Has Microsoft excel is trying to recover your information ever worked for anyone?

    63FD, my mistake has been that I hope it will work but it usually doesn't and certainly not quickly.
    Unfortunately on one of the (long ago) occasions I had done a lot of work forgetting to hit save and when it crashed I lost about 5 hours of work and had to go back to the original.
    Sometimes I'm doing too many things and forget to hit save, probably because at least 99% of the time it works fine and I become complacent.
    Fortunately today I was only into it an hour and when I shut down and went back to the original version I could catch up within 20 minutes.
    thanks for your comments.

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    Re: Has Microsoft excel is trying to recover your information ever worked for anyone?

    Yes, I have cases where the recovery works, from memory, mostly when the crashes were due to large datasets on pivottables. in versions before 2013.
    Also have had recoveries due to compatiblitiy issues (2003 fileformat in 2007 or higher versions)

    But I also have many attemps to recover that failed and resulted in doing part of the work again

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    Forum Expert Sam Capricci's Avatar
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    Re: Has Microsoft excel is trying to recover your information ever worked for anyone?

    Roel, thanks for your comment.
    All of mine I can remember that never finished recovery were from working in a graph then inadvertently clicking on a dropdown.
    Never had a pivot table issue (yet), they've almost always been graph related. You'd think I'd learn to make sure I've deactivated the graph before hitting a dropdown box. Must be a steep learning curve for me or just forgetfulness.

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    Re: Has Microsoft excel is trying to recover your information ever worked for anyone?

    Ctrl + S and often.
    HTH
    Regards, Jeff

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    Forum Expert Sam Capricci's Avatar
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    Re: Has Microsoft excel is trying to recover your information ever worked for anyone?

    Jeff, good advice.
    It would've limited my rework but not the crash.
    that was just bone headed and not paying enough attention to what I was doing.

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