The real problem here isn't temporary views. It's that two identical sheets, built from the same template, behave completely differently, and no one can explain why. That asymmetry is the story, and it's the clue most people miss. When one division's sheet generates temp views daily and the other never has, you're not looking at a user error or a settings toggle. You're looking at a behavioral difference embedded in the file's history, permissions, or usage patterns that the interface isn't surfacing.
For anyone managing shared worksheets in 365, this is a familiar kind of frustration. You've checked the obvious: the template, the autosave setting, the regional permissions. Everything looks identical. But identical on the surface doesn't mean identical underneath. A sheet that's been opened by more people, edited with different co-authoring habits, or synced through a slightly different SharePoint path can accumulate metadata that changes how Excel handles views. The fact that turning off autosave on the problem sheet didn't stop the temp views, and the user doesn't mention that it did, suggests the cause is deeper than a single option.
What this means for you is practical: stop treating the symptom and start tracing the trigger. Temporary views in Excel are created when a user filters, sorts, or changes the layout without saving it as a named view. They're not malicious, but they are disruptive when they pile up. If one division's staff are habitually sorting or filtering on the fly, while the other division's staff mostly read or enter data directly, you'll get exactly this pattern, same template, different behavior. The fix isn't a global setting. It's training, or a stricter view policy, applied only to the group that needs it.
The deeper lesson is that shared spreadsheet environments are less about the file itself and more about how people interact with it. You can't just compare two sheets side by side and expect to find the difference. You have to compare the workflows around them. Who opens the sheet, how often, and what do they do when they're inside it? That's where the answer lives. And once you find it, you'll be able to solve this specific problem, and prevent the next one from catching you off guard.