All recent versions of Microsoft Office programs come with a feature called AutoRecover. The AutoRecover feature (not to be confused with the AutoSave which also does the same job but only when working on a file saved to OneDrive), turned on by default, automatically saves Office documents that you are working on every few minutes and offers you restore the file in case of a crash or if you shut down your computer without saving the file.
The AutoRecover feature automatically saves the file that you are working on in the background. Since this happens in the background, you don’t see any message or notification on the screen. When you launch the same Office program after a crash, the program offers you restore the file automatically saved by the AutoRecover feature.
With the default settings, the AutoRecover saves files 14 minutes once. That is, the data is saved every 10 minutes, which is fairly a good frequency, but you might want to reduce it to 1 minute to make Office programs save files more often.
Make Office Word, Excel, & PowerPoint save files every minute
NOTE: In this example, we are making changes to the Word program. You can follow the same directions to make changes to Excel, PowerPoint, and other Office programs as well. Remember that you need to make the change to each of the Office programs separately.
Step 1: Click the File menu and then click Options to open the Options dialog.
Step 2: On the left pane, click on the Save tab to switch to the same.
Step 3: In the field next to the Save AutoRecover information every, select 1 minute from the drop-down box to force the Office program to save the data every minute. Click the OK button.
According to Microsoft, entering a lower number might slightly slow down the Office program. However, we did not feel the same on our computer. If you feel that the Office program has slowed down, change the value to 2 or 5.
Turn on or off AutoRecover feature in Office
Step 1: Click the File menu and then click Options.
Step 2: In the Options dialog, switch to the Save tab. Here, select Save AutoRecover information every and then click the OK button. In the field next to the Save AutoRecover information every option, select 1 to automatically save your document every minute. Click OK button.
