Unable to locate Office 2011 Autorecovery folder in Application support folder

I am a novice but I had a version of this problem and found the information at this link incredibly helpful in dealing with how office 2011 AutoRecovery is hidden in the current version of OSX. Hope this helps you.

http://macmanus.nl/2014/09/15/fixed-where-are-my-office-2011-autorecovery-files/

Nowadays, the AutoRecovery-folder is located in an entirely different location on your Mac. The correct path is this :

~/Users/username/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/Office 2011 AutoRecovery

But there is yet another tiny hurdle to get to it : in the current version of OSX, the user’s Library-folder is a hidden folder. So if you want to access it, the easiest way to do so is :

– in the Finder, click on “Go” in the top menu bar

– when the pulldown menu appears, press the ALT-key on your keyboard (a.k.a. OPTION-key) and an extra option named “Library” will appear in the pulldown menu

– while holding the ALT-key, click on “Library” and your personal (hidden) Library-folder will open in the Finder

– there you can navigate to Application Support–>Microsoft–>Office to find the “Office 2011 AutoRecovery”-folder you are looking for

Open Finder. In the left panel, under Favorites, click the house icon next to your computer's name. Then click Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/Office 2011 Autorecovery. (Drag that folder to your Favorites list so you'll always be able to find it.) Open the missing file.

I have been on soooo many threads trying to recover my excel file, and this was the one!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!

I also found that typing:

chflags nohidden ~/Library

into terminal also unhides the library for the username (I was having trouble doing it in finder)

Here's the link:

http://www.wikihow.com/Unhide-the-User-Library-Folder-on-a-Mac

YAY for recovered documents!! Thanks again!

I know it's late but this might be very helpful for anyone who installed MacOs Sierra.

~/Library/Preferences/AutoRecovery/FILE(autosaved).xls

I installed Sierra and couldn't run any of Microsofts products and the autosaved file wasn't yet indexed by the OS.

After installing a new version of MS Excel i went into recent and found all the missing files there.

Wrote down the dir for anyone having the same problem.

Here's how I did it, only a slight variation of other processes I read here. I went to the Go menu, clicked that while holding down the option key to bring up the Library menu. From there the path was Library>Application Support> Microsoft>Office >Office 2011 Autorecovery

That wasn't the last step. I found a number of documents, including some titled Autorecovery save of Document2 and so on, some Word files ending with .docx, others blank white with no suffix at all. I could tell they were probably the right ones because of the date, but when I tried to open them I got this error message:

Word can't open the file because the file format does not match the file extension.

So I dragged each one out to the desktop. Those with docx I changed to doc. To those with no suffix I added .doc.

AND I FOUND MY FILE!!!!!

Hope it helps someone!

I can get to my buried folder (I turned hidden folders on on my Mac a while back), but there is no "Office 2011 Autorecovery" folder under "Office". The only folder in that path is "User Templates." I checked Word's options and Autorecovery was already checked, so it should have been saving copies for me. I have plenty of files on my machine that I've worked with on off and on. There definitely should be some autosaved files somewhere. The one I am currently missing, I'm heartsick about the loss of time and having to redo. I usually do a pretty good job of Ctrl+S on a regular basis, but in this case, I hadn't thought to do that and Word crashed on me more than an hour into editing this file. Argh!

Maybe it's time to find a new word processor. Word 2011 leaves much to be desired.

I have Yosemite, btw, in case the lack of autorecovery files is specific to my OS version.

The above suggestion works! The previous suggestions that direct you to go to the Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/Office 2011 Autorecovery does not work. The autorecovery folder does not "exist" here. MLnash's suggestion works, and it will direct you to the autorecovery folder we are all searching for! Thank you very much, MLnash! 🙂 🙂 🙂

Many thanks to you and to the original problem solver.

The solution offered worked fine. But WHY OH WHY DOES APPLE DO THESE THINGS AND CREATE THESE PROBLEMS?

The problem occurred because my computer crashed and when it restarted the default save option in Excel was this auto recovery folder.

So the moral is to check that it hasn't decided to chenge the save folder for you, or you will be tearing your hair out.

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! My computer crashed, and I couldn't find my files. I restarted/recreated from an old saved version, and then those files disappeared too. Finally I noticed that I was saving to the "auto recovery" file and so my files weren't even saving into documents like they always have. I looked through TONS of threads on how to find the files in the auto recovery mode, and this is the ONLY one that worked at all!!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!

Thank you so much. I did follow your process, but the only files I found were Word Docs. I am looking for PowerPoint. I cut the paragraph I needed and then somehow lost it. Now I can't remember what I had written after hours........I checked to see if I had autosave turned on and I do. Word docs (only three and I must have 10GB of Word Docs), but nothing else. Do you have any other ideas.

Thank you again.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you. I spent three hours last night (the wee ones, as it happens) on the Apple support pages trying to find the location of my auto recovery files--in or out of time machine--with no luck. I finally went to bed furious. I just tried once more and came across your message and EUREKA!!!--there's my missing file! I don't have to rewrite this miserable manuscript. Bless you!

Hi Everyone,

I'm trying to locate the auto recovery file for an unsaved word document. I'm on OS X and tried the above mentioned solution : Click Finder > Go > Hold down the Option key and choose Library > Application Support > Microsoft > Office > Office 2011 AutoRecovery.

However, the Microsoft folder doesn't even exist in Application support?! I checked my word settings and it is set up to save documents for AutoRecovery every 10 mins. I've been searching for hours on how to recover the file but can't find anything related to my situation. Hope someone can help 😟

Thanks!

THANK YOU SO MUCH! I was led to this post from another very useful post and it saved me a full day of work. I had saved the excel file many times throughout the day but when I closed it it disappeared! The name I had given it didn't show up in Finder or Spotlight. You have saved me a full day of re-doing work!

thank you so much, after hours of looking for a solution, you solved my problem!!! 🙂

Thank you thank you thank you!!! You just saved me a huge project that got spirited away by the technology gods.