Windows 10: Word not saving documents, unsaved document pane has vanished, autosave not working

I have no idea what's going on here, but this is what's been happening:

1) Two weeks ago, Microsoft Word crashed unexpctedly. When I reopened it, the autosaved documents pane on the lefthand side had vanished, as did all of the unsaved documents it would have displayed. I could not find them anywhere. I just sighed and recreated the work.


2) Today, Word does the same thing. Except, autosave was definitely on and SHOULD have saved the document even if I hadn't. I went to bed, leaving Word open, and when I woke up, the internet was down. I worked on the document some, then tried to open another document to work on it. Word shut again. When I opened it, the document was gone, and the only saved version I had was from yesterday morning!

I don't know what to do. I've done the following:

1) Signed into OneDrive. It isn't there.
2) Searched Word App. It isn't there.

If the document is lost, it's lost. But I need to find out WHY Word is doing this so I can stop it from happening again.

Please help.

:)

 

Autosave documents in Word, Excel, Powerpoint


My version (Office 365 Proplus latest) is offering Autosave only for documents on Onedrive, and there you have option to save versions.





And check save options..




But if Office is acting like this for you, you should send feedback to MS immediately. It's not what I would want to do from my favorite Office suite.


Good practice would be, to first make a copy of document, and then start to edit it... but we all do like you described…
Edit: sorry, another edit. There are additional saving options under Advanced. Maybe check "Always save backup" and disable saving in background:

 

Word document not auto saved

I wrote a word document and never titled it or even saved it originally. i work and come back to my work and know that autosave exists so i didn't worry about it. My computer got closed accidentally. 2 days later i opened word and found my document under
Document 1 as is common for unsaved documents. When it opened There was only one paragraph. I spent hours on this and i have auto save set to every ten minutes, how is it possible that it only auto saved a paragraph i completed in ten minutes and lost hours
of work. Why even both using word if i can't trust auto save whatsoever. I saved the unsaved document it managed to recover thinking that it was better than nothing. Can i still find the file that i was last on? i worked on it on the 13th of January and after
i finished working the computer was left open for at least 2 hours so there was plenty of time to auto save. I opened it again on the 15th. Please help this essay is worth 15% of my grade. I do not back up with office or any of that stuff.

 

Autosave documents in Word, Excel, Powerpoint


But why should I have to do any one of these work arounds? I can see the (minimal) advantage of having the autosave, but why give the option to switch it on or off only for the document being worked on? There should be a master switch as well.

Word, as possibly every other program around, prompts you to save your document before closing it, Life's not so short that we need to save ourselves a couple of mouse clicks!