How To Recover an Unsaved Microsoft Word Document
Read about recovering a Microsoft Office document if it was closed without saving because of the program freezing or crashing. We’ll have a look at MS Office built-in file recovery tools and third party utilities.
Many people who often work with Microsoft Word documents may from time to time face a quite unpleasant situation: after spending hours on typing and editing some text, the computer would reboot (because of a sudden blackout, an error or MS Word shutdown due to an internal error). What can you do in such a situation?
Let us consider several simple ways to recover unsaved Word documents.
- Automatic Recovery in MS Word
- Recovery With Autosave Folder
- Recovery of an MS Word Document Deleted From The Disk
- Questions and answers
- Comments
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).
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.
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.
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.
Within this article, we would like to mention one of the best and at the same time simplest software products – Hetman Word Recovery, and its more comprehensive version designed to deal with all office file formats, Hetman Office Recovery.
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).
I didn't know about that Microsoft backup folder, will check it! It's really a useful tip since MS automatic recovery doesn't work very well. I often experience the situation when the Microsoft application crashes after rebooting; and this automatic recovery option is not available after that new crash. Will also keep in mind the Hetman solution, thanks for the review.
As a translator I work a lot with Microsoft Word documents. Of course, it would be a great problem to lose important files due to program shutdown or power failure. Unfortunately, I faced such unpleasant situations in the past and I definitely don't want them to happen again. Thanks for information about file recovery tips and the Hetman Word Recovery software product.
Are there any third-party software solutions that can assist with recovering unsaved Word documents?
Yes, there are several third-party software solutions that can assist with recovering unsaved Word documents. Examples include Recuva, EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard, Disk Drill, and MiniTool Power Data Recovery.
How can a user prevent losing unsaved Word documents in the future?
Is it possible to recover unsaved Word documents on a Mac computer?
Yes, it is possible to recover unsaved Word documents on a Mac computer. To do so, you can use a third-party data recovery software such as Disk Drill or EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard. These programs will scan your Mac computer for any unsaved Word documents and allow you to recover them.
How can a user access and recover unsaved Word documents using the File Explorer on Windows?
Open the File Explorer on your Windows computer. Go to the location where you were working on the Word document. Look for a file with the same name as your document, but with a .asd extension. Right-click on the file and select “Open”. The unsaved document will appear in a new window. Click “Save As” to save the document with a new name and location.
Is it possible to recover unsaved Word documents if AutoRecover was not enabled?
It is possible to recover unsaved Word documents if AutoRecover was not enabled, but it is not guaranteed. Depending on the operating system, you may be able to use a data recovery program to search for and recover unsaved Word documents. Additionally, some versions of Word have a “Recover Unsaved Documents” option in the File menu that can be used to attempt to recover unsaved documents.
Read how to recover an unsaved Microsoft Word document. If you do have any questions, don't hesitate to contact our technical support service - we will be happy to help you.
Read how to recover an unsaved microsoft word document. If you do have any questions, don't hesitate to contact our technical support service - we will be happy to help you.