The AutoRecover feature in Microsoft Excel 2013 can help to save your work in the event that your computer shuts down unexpectedly before you have the opportunity to save it.
Excel will typically perform an AutoRecover at a specified interval (usually every few minutes), thereby ensuring that you are only missing a small amount of information in the event that the file closes before you can save it manually.
But you may encounter situations where you would prefer that AutoRecover not run for a specific workbook. Fortunately, Excel 2013 has a setting that allows you to control AutoRecover on a workbook-by-workbook basis. Our tutorial below will show you where to find this setting.
How to Turn off AutoRecover for an Excel 2013 Workbook
The steps in this article are specifically for turning off the AutoRecover feature for the workbook that is currently open in Excel.
It will not affect the AutoRecover settings for other workbooks that you open in Excel, although the global Excel AutoRecover setting can be found on the same menu, if you decide that you want to turn that off as well.
Step 1: Open the workbook for which you wish to turn off AutoRecover.
Step 2: Click the File tab at the top-left corner of the window.
Step 3: Click the Options button at the bottom of the column on the left side of the window.
Step 4: Click the Save tab in the left column of the Excel Options window.
Step 5: Scroll down to the AutoRecover exceptions for section (the name of the current workbook should be listed to the right of it) then check the box to the left of Disable AutoRecover for this workbook only. You can then click the OK button at the bottom of the window to save and apply your changes.
Now that you know how to disable autorecover for a workbook in Excel 2013, you can stop that workbook from automatically saving itself if that’s a feature that you don’t want or need for that specific file.
If you find that you are always changing the type of file that you save to in Excel 2013, it might be easier to just switch the default file type. This article – https://www.solveyourtech.com/how-to-save-as-xls-by-default-in-excel-2013/ – will show you where that setting can be found.
Matthew Burleigh has been writing tech tutorials since 2008. His writing has appeared on dozens of different websites and been read over 50 million times.
After receiving his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Computer Science he spent several years working in IT management for small businesses. However, he now works full time writing content online and creating websites.
His main writing topics include iPhones, Microsoft Office, Google Apps, Android, and Photoshop, but he has also written about many other tech topics as well.