Exce Crash

April 12, 2007 7:16 AM

I lost all my (unsaved) work in Excel 2003 when my system did an auto-update restart without my permission. Please Help.

Yes, I should have saved. I know. AHHH!!
This file was never saved. Brand New worksheet. I spent about 90 minutes on it, and really dont want to do it again.
Is there anyway to get it back? Shouldn't computers be auto-saving everything?
When this auto-restart happened I expected my computer to come back up and I'd open Excel and all my work would be there, but no.

I think if a computer feels its superior enough to countdown itself and restart itself, the least it should do is take some consideration of all the open programs and auto save whatever needs to be.

Thanks for the help

posted by kevin_2864212 to computers & internet (4 comments total)

The only way that I can think of that would enable you to recover your work is if when you reopened Excel, it showed you your document that was open at the time Excel was forced to shut down, and gives you the option to revert to that document.

Unless it did that, I think you're going to have to redo all of your work.

I know you don't need to hear this, but I am so surprised by the sheer number of people that absolutely refuse to just save their document when they first create it. Once you do that, everything gets saved automatically. Such a small, step, and after that you don't need to do anything.

In future, as you create new documents, just take 5 seconds and save it and give it a name. You'll never encounter this situation you're currently in again.
posted by althanis at 7:24 AM on April 12, 2007

I can't help with recovering your document, but to prevent this from happening again, set Windows to not restart automatically after an update.

Since you've got Excel 2003, I'm assuming your computer runs XP. To disable automatic restarts, click Start | Run, then type cmd and hit enter. Run gpedit.msc, then navigate to Local Computer Policy | Computer Configuration | Administrative Templates | Windows Components | Windows Update. (Your account must have administrative privileges to run gpedit.msc.) Right-click on "no auto-restart for scheduled automatic updates installations", choose Properties, then check "Enable." Changes are saved automatically, so just close the program.

Once enabled, instead of restarting Windows will show you a prompt box asking if you want to restart your computer -- you can't make it go away but you can drag it out of the way until you're ready to restart. (I have one at the bottom of my screen right now!)
posted by harkin banks at 8:59 AM on April 12, 2007 [2 favorites]

Shouldn't computers be auto-saving everything?

You have my sympathy and I entire agree. Products like Microsoft Office should make it completely impossible to 'lose' work like this. We've had office suites for, like, 20 years now. You'd have thought this would have been integrated.
posted by humblepigeon at 10:12 AM on April 12, 2007

Did you check to see if Excel auto-saved anything? I think by default it's supposed to do that every ten minutes. I don't have access to Excel right now, but you can check in the Options dialogue to find in which directory the auto-save files go.

Sorry if this gets your hopes up for nothing, but you never know.
posted by lullabyofbirdland at 1:45 PM on April 12, 2007