Autorecover not working or saving file.

[William H]

We have over 20 computers running OS X 10.3.4 and Office X. Not only is
PowerPoint and Word crashing frequently, but PowerPoint is not recovering
any changes. In fact, it does not appear to be saving any temporary
autorecovery file. I can create a new file and perform a search for all files
created that day and no other file is listed around the file I created. Further,
if I use fs_usage in Terminal, when altering the PowerPoint file, it only
appears to be accessing the original file. There are no reads or writes to a
temp file. Is this broken in PowerPoint?

 

[William H]

I have determined that PowerPoint appears to be saving a temp file in /
Users/<name>/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/ as PowerPoint temp
<number>. However, when the program crashes, it is does not seem to be
loading this file or any other.

w

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

We have over 20 computers running OS X 10.3.4 and Office X. Not only is
PowerPoint and Word crashing frequently, but PowerPoint is not recovering
any changes. In fact, it does not appear to be saving any temporary
autorecovery file. I can create a new file and perform a search for all files
created that day and no other file is listed around the file I created. Further,
if I use fs_usage in Terminal, when altering the PowerPoint file, it only
appears to be accessing the original file. There are no reads or writes to a
temp file. Is this broken in PowerPoint?

Check PowerPoint, Preferences, Save tab.
Is there a checkmark next to "Save Autorecover Info Every" xx minutes, and is XX
set to a moderately small value?

If not, PowerPoint won't save recovery info.

Whether it's able to save and use recovery info may depend on the nature of the
crash as well. It's pretty clever of an app to be able to decide "Hey, I'm going
down in flames ... let's see what we can save here." but I wouldn't really expect
it to work 100% of the time.

--
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================
Featured Presenter, PowerPoint Live 2004
October 10-13, San Diego, CA www.PowerPointLive.com
================================================

 

[William H]

Yes, all autorecover is checked. I've tried it at a 2 minutes and 10 minutes.
The problem with 2 minuts is once it saves, the temp file PP uses to reopen
the file is deleted. But that is neither here nor there. At any setting PP is still
not opening the file with any changes that were made between the last save
and the crash.

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Yes, all autorecover is checked. I've tried it at a 2 minutes and 10 minutes.
The problem with 2 minuts is once it saves, the temp file PP uses to reopen
the file is deleted. But that is neither here nor there. At any setting PP is still
not opening the file with any changes that were made between the last save
and the crash.

It's hard to say what's going on; it could be a bug or conflict that prevents
autorecover from working, or it could be that the crash is of a type that it's not
able to recover from.

It seems that the real problem is to get it to stop crashing, though.

In either case, do you have any antivirus software running? If so, try disabling it
(I'd disconnect the computers from the net for the duration, just to be safe).

And is there any pattern to the crashing? Always on the same files, always when doing
the same sort of thing ... like that?

--
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================
Featured Presenter, PowerPoint Live 2004
October 10-13, San Diego, CA www.PowerPointLive.com
================================================

 

[Ulf Persson]

I am having exactly the same problem and have to manually save and
duplicate the file I am working since not only is there no autorecovery file
but the original disappears too. I can't see any pattern as to why it happens.

 

[AldoJ]

We are having the same problem as Ulf Persson. Even though Autorecovery is
on (frequency 10 minutes) when restarting PowerPoint after a hang,
Powerpoint does not come up with any Autorecovered documents (sometimes it
does) and also the original disappears, that is to say is ERASED from the
harddisk. So you not only lose all the work since the last manual save,
but actually since the last time that you changed the name or location of
the document! If anybody knows more about t he problem and can give us any
clue on how to solve it that would be very welcome.
We are all working on MAC OS X 10.3.5 with PowerPoint for MAC 2004.