Microsoft Excel cannot save AutoRecover info

[jp122163]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) I was using Excel for a few hours yesterday and got this error message that completely locked up excel and I had to force quit (and lost last few minutes of data entry):

"Microsoft Excel cannot save AutoRecover info to Macintosh
HD:Users:myfirstnamelastnameocuments:Microsoft user
Data:Office 2008 AutoRecovery

Do not show this dialog again for this session of Excel."

I was frozen -- had to force quit!

Any advice on why this happened and how I can prevent it from happening again? It happened twice yesterday -- I'm scared to use excel!

Thanks.

 

[John McGhie]

Well, that's a fairly generic error that covers a wide range of sins...

What it really means is "I tried to save the Autorecover file and the
operating system said "Nup!" and I have no idea why."

There can be four reasons:

1) The file is corrupt and Excel can't work out how to describe the data in
it.

2) The Operating System has filled up its temporary space and needs to
clean itself out.

3) Something has changed the file permissions so you no longer have
authority to write or delete from that folder.

4) The Hard Disk has an error affecting the space where the file should be
saved.

Those are in order of likelihood. Let's start with number 2: Shut the
computer down, wait until the power goes off, then restart. That will
trigger Unix (Mac OS X...) to run its cleanup housekeeping tasks.

If that doesn't fix it, move on to number 3) Fire up Disk Utility and run
"Repair Permissions", then restart (again!).

If it still isn't fixed, the most likely cause is that the file is cactus,
and the only sensible solution is to copy the data into a new workbook.

Hope this helps

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) I was using Excel
for a few hours yesterday and got this error message that completely locked up
excel and I had to force quit (and lost last few minutes of data entry):

"Microsoft Excel cannot save AutoRecover info to Macintosh
HD:Users:myfirstnamelastnameocuments:Microsoft user
Data:Office 2008 AutoRecovery

Do not show this dialog again for this session of Excel."

I was frozen -- had to force quit!

Any advice on why this happened and how I can prevent it from happening again?
It happened twice yesterday -- I'm scared to use excel!

Thanks.

--

The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410 | mailto:[email protected]

 

[jp122163]

Thanks for your great response! After reading it, I realized that the document was originally created on my PC in Excel, so I copied and pasted it into a new excel document using Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac. I hope that does the trick.

I also shut down my computer to let things tidy up and reset.

Thanks again!