Excel 2002 - Creating backup when saving file.

Not sure whether you mean an auto recovery file, but if that is what you mean, click tool, options, Save tab, check the box 'save autorecovery info every' and set the minutes to what you want. Uncheck the box 'disable autorecover', click OK. I think that the change takes effect next time you open Excel.

If you mean that you want to keep the original file and work on a copy, click File, open, navigate to the file you want, select it then click the arrow next to the open button and click on open as copy. When you save the copy (say after editing it) the original is retained and the new one is saved as copy(1) of filename.xls (or cpoy(2) if you do this twice). Handy if you want to make some trial changes without losing the original.

Thanks.

But no, I meant something else.

In older versions of Excel, under Options or someplace like that one could select to create a backup copy of the file when the file was saved. For instance, you create a new Excel file, you save it, as you save it you give it a name "myfile". When the save is made, Excel also creates a copy of the file called something like "bkp.myfile", which is the backup. Every time you work in myfile and make changes and save it, a duplicate of it is saved as bkp.myfile. Thereafter, if you screw up myfile and don't save the changes, and your system crashes and myfile is corrupted, then you can trash myfile and go back to your backup file bkp.myfile.

Choosing the setting to automatically create a backup file in Excel was simple to do. And finding out how to do it was simple to do, too. But now Microsoft has changed all of that by making simple help items impossible to find. (I don't see how a novice could find answers to anything without posting on a board like this.)

After posting, I happened to find the answer by doing a SAVE AS. Under SAVE AS, one can find the backup option one or two levels down in the options area.

Rut

Try File, Save As. Then click General Options. You'll see the Always Create Backup. However, it is a per workbook setting. You could create a template with this setting checked, then place it in the Startup folder of Excel. This should allow the setting to be available to all new workbooks.

This used to be available as an Add-In in 2000. If you really need it to be more automated, let me know and I'll write a code procedure for you...

Thanks for posting the solution and sorry that I had misunderstood. I did not know that option anyway and glad to learn.

Allan,

Thanks for the tip.

I came to Excel 2002 from something like Mac Excel 6.0, in which one had the option of creating a backup of a workbook upon any Save, not just Save As. But the Save As version will work fine for me.

Rut