My main save was deleted (saved over by my brother) and I am trying to salvage my character. I am trying to get the .bak file to work for previous autosaves but I am not sure how. I have changed the .bak file name to .ess (autosave1.ess.bak --> autosave1.ess) but it is still listed as a .bak file. My brother's autosaves are the regular .ess files but my autosaves are .bak, so I am trying to figure out a way to get the .bak to act like the .ess do. Any help would be appreciated. I have searched around the internet, but the only answers I have seen is to rename the .bak file to autosave1.ess and delete the original autosave1.ess file, but this doesn't do anything and the file is still treated as a .bak

Thank you in advance.

Try this....
Create a temp folder...move the .bac file to the temp folder.
Rename the file when in the temp folder. (remove the .bac extension)
Copy file
Move back to the Save folder. Right click and Paste it into the folder.
Windows should ask you to Overwrite the file .say yes. as it is now the same file as the one in the Save folder. an autosave .ess

Tried this and it doesn't do anything. They both have the same name (autosave1.ess) but one is listed as ESS and the other BAK, under the column "type".

You may not have show file extensions turned on, so if that's the case and you just renamed the back file to whatever.ess then it's probably actually named whatever.ess.bac but you don't see the .bac

Go into folder view options, kick on show file extensions and try the technique described again.

Thank you, this worked. Much appreciated for both of your help.

Good to see that you got your character back

As a side note, manually save a few times. I have been doing that since Morrowind and when the save folder gets too big, just move some saves into a 'backup' folder.

Glad ya got it working....I had thought about the Hidden extension thing also....some others were saying ...but I dont have a Skyrim.ini......