Microsoft Excel Autobackup

Excel Autobackup is an Microsoft Excel add-in which adds automatic backup capabilities to Excel. The default autosave in Excel is overwriting previous versions of the spreadsheet without asking the user if that is what he wants.

The Excel add-in provides automatic backups of Excel spreadsheets that do not interfere with previous backups. The interval of each automatic backup, the destination folder, the days the backups will be kept and the maximum number of backups can be defined when the add-in is loaded and activated in Microsoft Excel.

Unlike autosave, autobackup will never prompt you to save files, or replace your original files without asking.

Instead it will automatically save your files to a folder specified by you, at a time interval you define. You will also be able to define how many backup copies you want to keep.

The Excel Autobackup add-in has to be activated before it can be used. To do that a user would have to click on the Office ribbon and select Excel Options at the bottom of the menu. There he would click on the Add-ins menu entry on the left side and the button Go at the bottom the the add-ins menu once it is displayed.

This opens a list of available add-ins and a browse button among others on the right side. The user would then click on Browse and select the autobackup.xla file on the computer's hard drive. This loads and activates the plugin. After clicking OK in the menu the previously described settings can be changed and the add-in will start to automatically backup Excel spreadsheets right away.

The backup will be named after the original filename with an additional number to differentiate the backups.

Update: Excel Auto Backup seems to be only compatible with Office Excel 2007 and earlier, and not with newer versions of Excel.