Crash recovery doesn't work

LibreOffice calc crashed after my failed attempt to create a keyboard shortcut. Upon restart it offered to recover file, but recovery failed to recover much unsaved work. :frowning:

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What is recovered depends on your settings in Tools > Options > Load & save > Save and the time interval which you set for autorecovering. Is the autorecovering checked? What is the time interval? This interval defines the max loss of entered information. I use 3 min.

Let me add an experience based note:

Very often I see questions on how to recover lost files. Better than attempting to recover lost data is prepare against the loss of data. To avoid a loss of a file these are 3 recommendations:

1 - Check the following LibO options: Tools > options > Load/Save > General
---- Save Autorecovery every x mins (the shorter the value the small a possible loss; I use 3 min)
---- Automatically save document too ( I don’t use this, because I regard the autorecovery function as excellent.)
---- Always create a backup copy (download and read the free of charge LibO guide to understand how this works)

2 - When I work more than a day on a file, I create additional daily back ups. I use the format “filename_yymmdd.ext” and I keep at least 1 previous version.
In case the file is extremely important and I work long hours non-stop, I add the actual time behind the date.

3 - Backup the HDD of your computer to an external HDD. External HDD in the range of 2-4 TB cost mostly less than 100 EUR. (I do this almost daily and even backup external HDD onto another one.

When it comes to this topic this expression comes to my mind: “Fail to prepare is prepare to fail!”

“Automatically save document too” was removed in LO 5 (according to other posts it never worked) I didn’t use it so far because I preferred to control myself when to save, but I would like to try that now, after having lost data 3 times in the past week

“the shorter the value the small a possible loss; I use 3 min”
I tried 1 min. with LO 4, but when I opened a really large file the AutoRecovery save took so long that I could hardly work (3 year old hardware) and in the end crashed LO; now I am using 15 min.; I have one file open the whole day (task tracking) - losing the last 15 min is acceptable for me, as the data isn’t that much, but today LO 5.1.1.3 crashed just before lunch, recovery failed and I lost half a day of notes

"Always create a backup copy "
good advice, but that doesn’t really help with the non-working auto recovery (at least it never helped me so far); when LO today crashed before lunchtime I got the file from 8 o-clock in the morning, the backup was a version from yesterday late afternoon; I will have to increase the frequency of using Ctrl-S

LO 5.1.1.2 still didn’t improve for me, just lost about 2 hours of small notes; not much in volume, but annoying when trying to remember what I changed/added ;-(

It may not be relevant here, but a possible source of crashes with data loss may be Google Drive, or perhaps other automatic backup systems.

The other day, Calc crashed for no apparent reason, and the recovery window said No Data. Grrrrr. A little while later, I tried again and the file had been correctly restored as if by magic.

That reminded me of earlier identical incidents with Scribus, which no longer occur if I remember to put Google Drive on pause before working on a file (and remember to restart it afterwards…). However, in that case I was opening and closing big files too often for my slow internet connection to keep them synchronised.