What causes Microsoft Word to crash and lose unsaved documents?

Microsoft Word can crash and lose unsaved documents due to a number of reasons, such as a corrupted document, a virus, a software conflict, an outdated version of Microsoft Word, or a hardware issue.

Is it possible to recover unsaved Word documents using built-in features of the program?

Yes, it is possible to recover unsaved Word documents using the built-in features of the program. In Microsoft Word, you can use the “Recover Unsaved Documents” feature to recover any unsaved documents. To access this feature, open Microsoft Word and go to File > Info > Manage Document > Recover Unsaved Documents. Here, you can select the unsaved document you want to recover and click “Open” to open it.

What is the AutoRecover feature in Microsoft Word and how does it work?

The AutoRecover feature in Microsoft Word is a feature that automatically saves a copy of your document at regular intervals. It helps protect your work in the event of an unexpected power failure or system crash. When you open a document, Word will look for any AutoRecover files and prompt you to recover them. You can adjust the frequency of the AutoRecover saves in the Options menu.

Can AutoRecover restore the most recent changes made to a Word document before a crash?

Yes, AutoRecover can restore the most recent changes made to a Word document before a crash. AutoRecover will save changes to a document every 10 minutes, and if the document is closed unexpectedly, AutoRecover will open it with the most recent changes.

What is the difference between AutoRecover and AutoSave in Microsoft Word?

AutoRecover is an automated feature that saves a copy of your document in the event of a power failure or other unexpected shutdown. It saves your work periodically while you are working on it, so that if something happens, you don't lose your progress. AutoSave is a feature that automatically saves your document every few minutes without you having to manually save it. It is designed to save you time and prevent data loss in the event of a power failure or other unexpected shutdown.

Save Your Work: How to Swiftly Recover an Unsaved Microsoft Word Document

Author: Vladimir Artiukh
Editor: Oleg Afonin
Updated: 11.12.2024 14:56

In this article, learn how to instantly recover an unsaved Microsoft Word document. Losing your work can be frustrating, but with our expert tips and techniques, you’ll never have to worry about lost data again. Whether you’re a student, professional, or anyone who uses Word, this guide will save you time and stress.

Save Your Work: How to Swiftly Recover an Unsaved Microsoft Word Document

Let us consider several simple ways to recover unsaved Word documents.

Contents

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📖 How to Recover an Unsaved or Lost Word, Excel Document or PowerPoint Presentation in 2021 ⚕️

Method 1. Automatic Recovery in MS Word

Whatever happens – a common error, a sudden reboot (without warning you), a power failure and a total blackout for your entire block of flats – the most important thing is never give way to panic!

By default, Microsoft Word is “smart” enough to try automatic recovery of the document (in case of a disorderly close-down, i.e. close-down without the user’s permission).

After a PC is suddenly shut down and then started again, the application usually suggests saving any unsaved documents. The picture below shows how it looks in MS Word 2016 (in other versions of MS Word, the picture will be similar).

Microsoft Word usually suggests saving any unsaved documents

Important notice! MS Word suggests recovering files only after the first restart after a disorderly closedown. That is, if you opened MS Word, closed it and then opened it again, it will not ask you about recovery options again. That is why I recommend you to save everything you need for further work, as soon as the application offers you to do so.

Method 2. Recovery With Autosave Folder

Above, we mentioned that Microsoft Word is smart enough by default. If you haven’t modified its settings, the application will save the document automatically every 10 minutes to a “backup” folder (a kind of protection against emergency situations). It seems completely logical that the second thing you should do is to check if the lost document is in that folder.

How do you find it? Here is an example with MS Word 2016.

Click the menu “File / Settings” (see the screenshot below).

Then, select the “Save” tab. There we can find checkboxes we are interested in:

automatic saving of documents every 10 minutes (you can modify it to the value of 5 minutes, if you experience frequent power failures);
data directory for autosaving (that is what we need).

Just highlight and copy the address, then launch Windows Explorer and paste the copied data into the address bar. You may be lucky enough to find what you need in the directory that opens.

Method 3. Recovery of an MS Word Document Deleted From The Disk

This method will help you in the worst cases, when you used to have a file on the disk but it has disappeared now. It can happen for a number of reasons: a viral attack, accidental deletion (all the more that Windows 8 and 10, for instance, do not ask by default if you really want to delete the file when you press Delete button), disk formatting etc.

There are a vast number of applications designed to recover files, but there only a few of them specialized to work with office document formats or Microsoft Word in particular.

Office Recovery™ 4.8

The program for recovering files created in Microsoft and Open Office.

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Feature	Hetman Partition Recovery	Hetman Office Recovery	Hetman Uneraser
Purpose	Data recovery from damaged, deleted, or formatted disk partitions.	Recovery of deleted or damaged Microsoft Office documents, PDF files.	Recovery of deleted files of popular formats.
Target Audience	Users who have lost access to partitions or entire disks.	Office workers, scientists, students.	Users who have lost files.
Supported File Types	All file types (documents, photos, videos, etc.).	Documents: DOC(X), XLS(X), PPT(X), PDF, RTF, TXT, CSV.	All known file formats.
Recovery Methods	Quick and deep scan, partition structure recovery.	Quick and deep scan focused on office files.	Search and recovery of deleted files.
File Systems	FAT/exFAT, NTFS/ReFS, APFS/HFS+, Ext2/3/4/ReiserFS, XFS/UFS, ZFS/Btrfs, VMFS, HikvisionFS.	FAT/exFAT, NTFS/ReFS, APFS/HFS+, Ext2/3/4/ReiserFS, XFS/UFS.	FAT/exFAT, NTFS/ReFS, APFS/HFS+, Ext2/3/4/ReiserFS, XFS/UFS.
Interface	User-friendly graphical interface with step-by-step wizard.	Simple interface focused on office files.	Optimized for working with deleted files.
Additional Features	Virtual machine recovery, disk image creation.	Document preview before recovery.	Preview of photos, videos, and documents before recovery.

Within this article, we would like to mention one of the best and at the same time simplest software products, and its more comprehensive version designed to deal with all office file formats, Hetman Office Recovery.

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🔥How to Recover Deleted Word (DOC, DOCX) Documents With Hetman Word Recovery Software in 2021⚕️

What you should not do before recovery:

do not copy to the disk (where some documents/files were lost) any files, and try not to work with it;
do not format the disk (even if it is shown as RAW and Windows suggests that you should format it);
do not recover files to that disk.

Many people recover files to the same disk where they were lost from and which is scanned for lost files: it’s something you mustn’t do! The matter is that when recovering a file to the same disk it may be overwritten onto files which are not recovered yet. As a result, a part of such files may become unreadable (or partially unreadable).

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🔝 Top Tools to Recover Deleted Documents (Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, LibreOffice and Others)