Has this ever happened to you: you have been working on a presentation for hours and suddenly PowerPoint or even the computer crashes? This may
happen due to a power outage, instability of the system, or even PowerPoint itself may crash. You realize that you had not saved the presentation
for a long time and you may have lost most of your work! Although you can keep your programs updated, system secure, and even save your file often,
these steps provide no guarantee that you will never see a crash again and lose all or some of your work.
Fortunately, you can salvage most of your work if PowerPoint closes abnormally by enabling AutoRecover and
AutoSave options. These options can be life savers as they help you prevent losing your precious work in two ways:
- Your presentation is automatically saved: This type of protection works on a file specific basis. If you enable
AutoRecover or AutoSave, your file is automatically saved at a predetermined time interval. Therefore, if you have
been working for a long time but forget to save a file or if your power fails, the file you have been working on contains all or at least some of the
work you have done since you last saved it.
- Your program state is automatically saved: This type of protection works on the program specific basis. If PowerPoint crashes
when you were working on a file that was never saved, then you will be presented with a recovered file the next time you launch the program. You can
then save this file, and continue working with it, this is an extra benefit of enabling AutoRecover or AutoSave.
Follow these steps to enable AutoRecover or AutoSave options in
PowerPoint 2010:
- Launch PowerPoint, access the File menu, and choose Options, as shown highlighted in
red within Figure 1.
Figure 1: Options within the File menu
- This brings up the PowerPoint Options dialog box, as shown in Figure 2. Make sure the Save
option is selected within the sidebar of the dialog box (highlighted in red in Figure 2).
Figure 2: PowerPoint Options dialog box
- Within the PowerPoint Options dialog box, you need to select the following options within the
Save presentations section:
• Make sure the Save AutoRecover information every x minutes check-box is selected (highlighted in
red within Figure 3). Also, choose how often you want to save the AutoReceover information, to do so,
enter the number in the Minutes box. Try to enter a small number in the minutes box, like 5. That way, you'll never lose more than
5 minutes of work.
• Select the Keep the last autosaved version if I close without saving check-box (highlighted in
blue within Figure 3). This option ensures that your file changes are not discarded entirely if you
close PowerPoint without saving
changes.
• You’ll also see the path location where your AutoRecover files are saved (highlighted in green within
Figure 3).
Figure 3: AutoRecovery options within the PowerPoint Options dialog box
- After making the appropriate choices, click the OK button.
See Also:
AutoRecover and AutoSave Options in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows
AutoRecover and AutoSave Options in PowerPoint 2013 for
Windows
