Excel for Mac: how to recover unsaved file?

[JohnDohe]

OMG!!

I spent days working on an Excel for Mac worksheet (version 15.33).

I'd left it, open, on my MacMini (late 2012; Sierra 10.12.6) for days.

I'd made countless changes and customizations to it in the interim.

Today I went to close it and . . . chose NOT to save it !!!

ARRGGHH!!!

How do I get it back?

And BTW, how do I know which version of Excel for Mac I'm using?

Thanks!

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello and welcome.

When Excel is running, click Excel > About Excel from menu bar to find out which version you have.

Unfortunately, if you didn't save it prior to closing it, then you have probably lost all of your work. You could check in Excel > File > Open Recent to see if it may be there. This is one reason I prefer Google Sheets over Excel - when you stop inputting information, it automatically saves the file to your Google Drive.

Do you happen to have Time Machine running?

C

 

[JohnDohe]

Hi,

Here's what I've got:

 

[JohnDohe]

Excel > File > Open Recent shows the file, and it opens,
but all the formatting, coloring, etc are gone. Just the
text is there.

No Time Machine.

How would Time Machine have saved it??

 

[Cory Cooper]

Well, at least the text is there...you must have saved that at some point.

If Time Machine were running, you might have been able to recover a recent version due to Excel's "auto-save" version, but probably not likely It is extremely critical, especially with Microsoft Office apps, to save frequently and even save, close, and reopen at times. Office is notorious for crashing and losing all unsaved work.

We strongly suggest that you purchase an external hard drive and setup Time Machine to perform routine backups. It's not a question of if, but when a hard drive will fail. We'd hate for you to lose all of your data at some point.

C

 

[honestone]

Office 2016 (and of course Excel) is now at V15.36. You can get the update/updates from here:

https://support.office.com/en-us/ar...542-9954-7e3209681a41?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

While Time Machine is fine, if you do need to do a complete recovery, it is time consuming. Either SuperDuper! (http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html), or Carbon Copy Cloner (https://bombich.com/) are better, as both of them make a bootable backup/clone of your system. I use SuperDuper!, and when either I am upgrading to a new Mac OS, doing a "within the same" Mac OS upgrade, or need to do a complete recovery (very rarely happens), it is very smooth with a SuperDuper! backup.

But be that as it may, Cory is definitely correct. You really need to start making backups to an external device.

Finally, with Office 2008, Office 2011, and now Office 2016, I have never had an issue with them crashing. In fact, given how often I use Outlook 2016 for my EMail needs, it never crashes. Of course, I suspect it helps that I make a concerted effort to keep my Macs "lean, mean, and clean".

BTW, I also have a late 2012 Mac Mini, along with a mid 2013 13" MacBook Air (and running OS 10.12.6 on both). Both machines run fine for me, and of course all my apps do too.