Applies To: Microsoft Visio

Did you know that unlike EVERY OTHER Microsoft Office program, Visio does NOT have autosaving turned on by default? If so, you probably found out the hard way like me.

Making Visio diagrams comes up pretty often when documenting workflows, server configurations, etc. Each of these diagrams always takes me far longer than it should and losing one that I have been working on makes we weep uncontrollably naked in the corner for 4+ hours. Here, I made a diagram:

Generally I’m slapping Ctrl-S like it’s a gopher in one of those gopher slapping games or in some other situation where frequent slapping occurs. But for whatever reason when I’m trying to get those lines perfectly aligned to the grid or I’m making minor font tweaks, etc. I tend to lose my rhythm. Then if an errant update, a crash, or me dumbly closing the wrong window while ignoring the warning dialogs puts an end to my precious diagram, I go searching for the auto recovery files just like I would with Word or Excel.

But if you haven’t manually configured this, they are no where. All you’ll find in your AppData folder are shape caches and regret.

Turning on Visio Autosave

These instructions are for Visio 2013 but should generally work for 2010 and 2016 as well.

1. Open Visio
2. Click the File tab/menu in the upper left
3. Choose Options
   
4. In the Options dialog, choose the Save section from the navigation on the left
5. Check the box next to Save AutoRecover information every X minutes
   
6. Click OK
7. Reap the benefits of lower blood pressure

I’ve set mine to 5 minutes since I’m extra paranoid (The standard setting for other office programs is 10 minutes).

Go do this before you forget. It’s too late for me, perhaps you’ll do better.