Bill is embarrassed to admit it, but he has had the same file open in Excel for five days without saving it. Then, he wrote a quick little Macro that locked up Excel. Ctrl+Break isn't stopping the Macro... He can End Process to kill Excel, but then he loses his other Workbook. It sure would be nice to make absolutely sure that AutoRecover has the files before killing Excel. Today, in Episode #1715, Bill shows us how to track down the AutoRecover files before using End Process to kill a runaway process in Excel.
Use Excel® 2013 VBA and Macros to automate virtually any routine task, and save yourself hours, days, maybe even weeks. Then, learn how to make Excel do things you thought were simply impossible! You'll discover macro techniques you won't find anywhere else and learn how to create automated reports that are amazingly powerful and useful. VBA and Macros Excel 2013
For more information on Excel 2010 VBA and Macros, check out...
VBA and Macros: Microsoft Excel 2010 - The fastest, best way to go beyond the Macro Recorder and move up the Excel VBA learning curve...Includes crucial information on making Excel 2010 VBA code work with older versions. Using Microsoft Excel 2010 VBA scripting features, Excel users can save dozens - or even hundreds - of hours per year. But most Excel users have never written a VBA script: many haven't even used Excel's built-in Macro Recorder. VBA and Macros: Microsoft Excel 2010
"The Learn Excel from MrExcel Podcast Series"
Visit us: MrExcel.com for all of your Microsoft Excel Needs!
Use Excel® 2013 VBA and Macros to automate virtually any routine task, and save yourself hours, days, maybe even weeks. Then, learn how to make Excel do things you thought were simply impossible! You'll discover macro techniques you won't find anywhere else and learn how to create automated reports that are amazingly powerful and useful. VBA and Macros Excel 2013
For more information on Excel 2010 VBA and Macros, check out...
VBA and Macros: Microsoft Excel 2010 - The fastest, best way to go beyond the Macro Recorder and move up the Excel VBA learning curve...Includes crucial information on making Excel 2010 VBA code work with older versions. Using Microsoft Excel 2010 VBA scripting features, Excel users can save dozens - or even hundreds - of hours per year. But most Excel users have never written a VBA script: many haven't even used Excel's built-in Macro Recorder. VBA and Macros: Microsoft Excel 2010
"The Learn Excel from MrExcel Podcast Series"
Visit us: MrExcel.com for all of your Microsoft Excel Needs!
Transcript of the video:
MrExcel podcast is sponsored by "Easy-XL"!
Learn Excel from MrExcel podcast, episode 1715 - Where to Find AutoRecover, or Autosave Files?
Hey, welcome back to the MrExcel netcast, I'm Bill Jelen. I was working on a situation yesterday, and I kind of panicked. You know, I have a computer that stays on 24/7, and I have a file there, just my to-do list, right?
My to-do list runs, you know, I keep the list running for a month, crossing stuff off, and so on, and I never really think to close that file. And on Monday, I'm kind of embarrassed to say this, that file, it had been open for a month, and it had last been saved, maybe 5 or 6 days ago. Right, so this is the same instance of Excel, it's been open for a long long long time, I never even think about saving this file because I'm always adding to it.
And, you know, I get a question, the red fox question from yesterday, right, and I said "Ah, this is going to be easy this, is a quick little macro." And so, well, that's going to be easy, I wrote the macro and the macro is working, but it's not working for the second item. So I just add a couple of lines of code, and now in retrospect, I realized those codes were really, really bad, because it was counting on this WF variable to get reset, and it wasn't getting reset. I didn't have WF = 0, but I just added a couple lines of code. And so I didn't think to save this file, I didn't think to save the other file, I just said "Let's run it", type in the word, and right away I realized something bad. I mean, this macro should run in a couple of seconds, and I've thrown it into a loop, I'm waiting for it to finish, you know, trying to think "What did I do, oh no!" And normally we could get out of a macro with Ctrl+Break or Esc, right?
But it's now in this Not Responding, so Ctrl+Break, I'll press Esc, you know, it's not responding to me. And that's no big deal, because it was just a couple of lines of code. And I actually was working on the main desktop PC, not the podcast PC, so I knew that I'd have to take this and recreate it, you know, take me a few minutes, not a big deal.
But then I started to panic "Oh no, my other file, my to-do list file that's been open for 5 days!" When was the last time that was saved? And is AutoSave still working, or did I get one of those annoying messages "Hey, we've disabled AutoRecover for the remainder of this this session!" You know, I don't know, several days. And so I come out here and try and do the Esc thing, now IT's not responding, and Ctrl+Break, it's not responding. Roary(?) at the MrExcel message board said "Just try and hold down Esc, hold down Esc for a long time." So right now I'm pressing the Esc key, nothing, and I'm like "Oh no." Now of course I can Ctrl+Alt+Del and go to Task Manager, and in the Task Manager I can end the Excel process, but that unfortunately is going to end, both the macro that is created, and this file that's been open for days and days and days. And so I really wanted to make sure before I did that, that I wasn't going to lose a lot of information. So the question comes up "Where is AutoRecover saved?" Alright, and here's where we find it.
So I'm going to do the Win+E to get the Windows Explorer up here, I'm going to type %APPDATA%, which is a shortcut to your Application Data folder, and then Microsoft, and then Excel.
Now I had never really been to this folder until, you know, I was panicking, and here's the file name, aaaFileForPodcast1715. Oh my gosh! And it looks like it's been updated 7:14, and if you can see down here, my taskbar, it's currently 7:21. So it looks like there was a recent AutoSave. I will go in here and yeah, there was a AutoSave at 6:28 6:40 7:02 7:14, so that's all good. So it looks like I've lost 7 minutes worth of work, how much did I lose?
I actually copied this, Ctrl+C to copy, go out to another folder where I usually just store some work files, and paste there, right click and paste, OK. And you can actually open this in a second instance of Excel. Now I have Excel 2010 and Excel 2013 here, so I was able to go to Excel 2013, read-only, and there's the file. That's interesting, it opens as read-only. Alright, so at least I can see, hey, I made this note at 7:13 AM.
Alright, so I started to breathe easier, because I knew that sure enough, the file was still there. I did make a second copy the file, File, Save As, and just notice it changes it back to an xlsb, even though mine is always an xlsm, and just BackupToDoFile. Alright, so now I can close this Excel, File, Close, Alt F X, and now when I force a restart here, Ctrl+Alt+Del, start the Task Manager, I'm just going to kill the Excel process, BAM, alright. And then you always hope that AutoRecover is going to be available again, but you never really know. And yes, sure enough it was there, the AutoRecover files are there.
So, before I killed Excel, I wanted to make sure that the AutoRecover files were there, and it turns out that all of this information is under File, Options, Save. You can control the AutoRecover file location, and even how many minutes it was saved, and keep the last AutoSave version if I close without saving.
So all of these are the default, you can go in and change this. Of course, you know, the problem is, you can't check this once your computer is locked up. Hey and finally, have you ever gotten stuck with a macro in a loop, and it's not responding to Ctrl+Break, and you found some magic way to make it respond to Ctrl+Break or to Esc, that would be great information to know as well. Alright, there you go, how to find the AutoRecover files before you kill Excel, to make sure that the data that you need is really there.
Alright hey, I want to thank you for stopping by, we'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel!
Learn Excel from MrExcel podcast, episode 1715 - Where to Find AutoRecover, or Autosave Files?
Hey, welcome back to the MrExcel netcast, I'm Bill Jelen. I was working on a situation yesterday, and I kind of panicked. You know, I have a computer that stays on 24/7, and I have a file there, just my to-do list, right?
My to-do list runs, you know, I keep the list running for a month, crossing stuff off, and so on, and I never really think to close that file. And on Monday, I'm kind of embarrassed to say this, that file, it had been open for a month, and it had last been saved, maybe 5 or 6 days ago. Right, so this is the same instance of Excel, it's been open for a long long long time, I never even think about saving this file because I'm always adding to it.
And, you know, I get a question, the red fox question from yesterday, right, and I said "Ah, this is going to be easy this, is a quick little macro." And so, well, that's going to be easy, I wrote the macro and the macro is working, but it's not working for the second item. So I just add a couple of lines of code, and now in retrospect, I realized those codes were really, really bad, because it was counting on this WF variable to get reset, and it wasn't getting reset. I didn't have WF = 0, but I just added a couple lines of code. And so I didn't think to save this file, I didn't think to save the other file, I just said "Let's run it", type in the word, and right away I realized something bad. I mean, this macro should run in a couple of seconds, and I've thrown it into a loop, I'm waiting for it to finish, you know, trying to think "What did I do, oh no!" And normally we could get out of a macro with Ctrl+Break or Esc, right?
But it's now in this Not Responding, so Ctrl+Break, I'll press Esc, you know, it's not responding to me. And that's no big deal, because it was just a couple of lines of code. And I actually was working on the main desktop PC, not the podcast PC, so I knew that I'd have to take this and recreate it, you know, take me a few minutes, not a big deal.
But then I started to panic "Oh no, my other file, my to-do list file that's been open for 5 days!" When was the last time that was saved? And is AutoSave still working, or did I get one of those annoying messages "Hey, we've disabled AutoRecover for the remainder of this this session!" You know, I don't know, several days. And so I come out here and try and do the Esc thing, now IT's not responding, and Ctrl+Break, it's not responding. Roary(?) at the MrExcel message board said "Just try and hold down Esc, hold down Esc for a long time." So right now I'm pressing the Esc key, nothing, and I'm like "Oh no." Now of course I can Ctrl+Alt+Del and go to Task Manager, and in the Task Manager I can end the Excel process, but that unfortunately is going to end, both the macro that is created, and this file that's been open for days and days and days. And so I really wanted to make sure before I did that, that I wasn't going to lose a lot of information. So the question comes up "Where is AutoRecover saved?" Alright, and here's where we find it.
So I'm going to do the Win+E to get the Windows Explorer up here, I'm going to type %APPDATA%, which is a shortcut to your Application Data folder, and then Microsoft, and then Excel.
Now I had never really been to this folder until, you know, I was panicking, and here's the file name, aaaFileForPodcast1715. Oh my gosh! And it looks like it's been updated 7:14, and if you can see down here, my taskbar, it's currently 7:21. So it looks like there was a recent AutoSave. I will go in here and yeah, there was a AutoSave at 6:28 6:40 7:02 7:14, so that's all good. So it looks like I've lost 7 minutes worth of work, how much did I lose?
I actually copied this, Ctrl+C to copy, go out to another folder where I usually just store some work files, and paste there, right click and paste, OK. And you can actually open this in a second instance of Excel. Now I have Excel 2010 and Excel 2013 here, so I was able to go to Excel 2013, read-only, and there's the file. That's interesting, it opens as read-only. Alright, so at least I can see, hey, I made this note at 7:13 AM.
Alright, so I started to breathe easier, because I knew that sure enough, the file was still there. I did make a second copy the file, File, Save As, and just notice it changes it back to an xlsb, even though mine is always an xlsm, and just BackupToDoFile. Alright, so now I can close this Excel, File, Close, Alt F X, and now when I force a restart here, Ctrl+Alt+Del, start the Task Manager, I'm just going to kill the Excel process, BAM, alright. And then you always hope that AutoRecover is going to be available again, but you never really know. And yes, sure enough it was there, the AutoRecover files are there.
So, before I killed Excel, I wanted to make sure that the AutoRecover files were there, and it turns out that all of this information is under File, Options, Save. You can control the AutoRecover file location, and even how many minutes it was saved, and keep the last AutoSave version if I close without saving.
So all of these are the default, you can go in and change this. Of course, you know, the problem is, you can't check this once your computer is locked up. Hey and finally, have you ever gotten stuck with a macro in a loop, and it's not responding to Ctrl+Break, and you found some magic way to make it respond to Ctrl+Break or to Esc, that would be great information to know as well. Alright, there you go, how to find the AutoRecover files before you kill Excel, to make sure that the data that you need is really there.
Alright hey, I want to thank you for stopping by, we'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel!
