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How to recover unsaved Word (or Excel) document

User question

Hello.

Help, for a long time I typed one document in Microsoft Word (version 2013 if needed) - then the light went out and the computer turned off. Now I think what to do, the document is very necessary, and I did not have time to save it.

There is no electricity yet, but it is expected to become languid ... What can be done, how to restore the document (and is it possible)? I apologize for the mistakes, I am writing from the phone ... (note: errors were corrected by the editorial board).

Good times of the day!

Well, firstly, wait for the appearance of electricity, without this there is no way. 😉

In general, the situation in the question is not so rare for those who often work with Word or Excel documents. In addition to a power outage, there could be an inattentional mistake: just when a person closes the document, Word asks again "Save file or not" - many, by inertia, press not to save (and after a few seconds / minutes they grab their heads ...).

It is also not uncommon when a user simply deletes a folder with documents, forgetting to copy one or two documents from it ...

Meanwhile, in some cases it is possible to restore such Word documents almost "painlessly". I will tell you how to do this in this article ...

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Several ways to recover documents

Option # 1: use auto-repair

Word would not be such a popular text editor if it did not have at least an elementary protection mechanism against power outages, critical errors (after which the program simply closes without asking about saving the document).

In general, if your PC suddenly turned off (that is, it crashed) - Word "knows" about this, and the next time you start the program, it will offer to restore a copy of the document.

Important!

Please note that such auto-recovery is available only after an abnormal shutdown of the PC and the window is shown only the first time the program is started. If you open-close Word, and then open it again: you will not see any window with auto-recovery.

So, when the electricity comes in, just open Word and save your document. In most cases, nothing else needs to be done ...

Example - Word has recovered the following documents

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Option # 2: if you forgot to save the document

(Also relevant if Word did not offer to restore the document, see the screenshot above.)

This method is suitable for those who typed-typed their text, and then, when closing the document, forgot to save it.

If you have a modern version of Word (2013, 2016, 2019), then you just need to open the menu "File / Open / Recent" , and at the bottom of the window, click the button "Recover unsaved documents" (as in my screenshot below).

Recover unsaved documents

Next, you will see a list of documents that you forgot to save (moreover, there may even be those documents with which you have already worked, God knows, when ...). In my case, 4 documents were found, to be honest, I have forgotten about 3 of them for a long time ✌.

Several documents - any can be opened!

Generally a good working way too. You should definitely try it.

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Option # 3: using a folder to auto-save documents

If you have not changed the Word auto-save settings (and this is done by 1% of users), then by default every 10 minutes the editor saves any open document to the auto-save folder.

To find it, you need to open the menu "File / Options" then open the tab "Preservation" ... Next, notice two things:

  • on the auto-save timer (you can set it in 1-2 minutes if you value your files a lot);
  • catalog of data for auto-recovery. Open it and try to find your document in this directory.

Find folder to auto-save documents

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Option # 4: check trash, find document on hard drive

If you had a Word file in your folder with documents, and now you have noticed a "loss" - then you should know that all is not lost yet! Perhaps the file can be saved ...

First of all, check the shopping cart (for some reason, many users completely forget about it). And by the way, whoever forgets about it has more chances to restore the file, tk. they forget and clean it up!

Basket

In addition, I recommend trying to search for your file on disk. If the file has not been opened for a long time, then many users do not even remember which folder it was in.

To start the search, open the explorer and the disk on which you have documents. Next, open the search settings and specify that the search is carried out in all subfolders (number 2 in the screenshot below), also check all three checkboxes in the additional parameters: file contents, system files, ZIP archives.

Then type the phrase from the document (which is 100% in it) into the search box. Wait for the end of the search.

How to search for files in Windows 10 Explorer

To help!

I can't find a file on the disk ... Different options for searching for files: only text, only pictures, by content, etc. - //ocomp.info/ne-mogu-nayti-fayl-na-diske.html

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Option # 5: find a deleted document on your hard drive

Unfortunately, in some cases, it also happens that MS Word could not recover the document itself. Checking the recycle bin and searching for a file on disk were also not successful. But you know that you once saved the file and it was on disk. In this case, you can try to restore the file on disk (or at least part of it).

How is this possible?

The fact is that when you delete something from the disk - physically the file as it was written on the disk, it remains there. It's just that the file system of the disk now thinks that this place where it used to lie has become free, and other files can be written to it. Those. the sooner you wake up that you have deleted something you need - the higher the chances of success!

To scan a disk for deleted files, you need special utilities to recover information. There are a lot of such utilities: there are both paid and free, both for novice users and professionals. I propose to stop at one of the utilities: free and maximally focused on the novice user. This is about Recuva .

To help!

10 free programs to recover deleted data - //ocomp.info/10-programm-dlya-vosstanovleniya-dannyih.html

Recuva

Developer site: //www.piriform.com/recuva

Free data recovery software. It will help in those cases when you accidentally deleted the necessary files (including from the recycle bin), formatted the disk, etc. In general, in those cases when you want to scan the drive (USB sticks, HDDs, SSDs, etc. are supported) for any documents that may have been preserved on it.

By the way, you can search not only Word documents, but also MP3 files, photos and pictures, etc.

In general, let's get down to business!

How to recover files from disk (using Recuva)

1) The first thing I recommend: if possible, do not use the drive on which the files disappeared - i.e. do not write any files to it (and, if possible, do not load Windows from it). It is ideal to disconnect the hard drive and connect it to another PC from which to scan the drive.

2) After installing and launching Recuva: the recovery wizard will start, which will prompt you to immediately select the type of files you are looking for. Because article about documents, I chose "Documents" (looking for Power Point files, PDF, Excel, Word, etc.).

Document search (Recuva)

3) In the next step, specify the drive on which the files disappeared (you can even specify a folder with documents). In my case, the entire "C: \" drive was scanned.

Selecting a Disk to Scan (Recuva)

4) In the next step, Recuva will ask you to select a scan mode: normal or deep. I recommend checking the box next to "Enable Deep Scan" - in this case, a deep scan will be performed, which will find much more missing files on the disk (although it will take more time).

To begin! (Deep scan)

5) During scanning and searching for deleted files - I recommend not to interfere with the utility in any way, and not to open resource-intensive applications (torrents, games, reactors, etc.). Better to leave the PC alone. The scan time depends on the size of the disk, its condition, loading the PC with extraneous tasks, etc.

Disk scan

6) And finally, after scanning you will be shown all the documents that can be recovered. Please note that they will be broken down into three parts:

  1. with green circles: the files are in good condition, and most likely you will be able to open and read them;
  2. yellow: the state of the file is satisfactory, partially possibly unreadable;
  3. red: you may open the file, but will there be anything readable in it - the question is ...

If there are not many files, I recommend selecting them all and pressing the restore button "Recover" (then open each document one by one and check its contents).

Selecting documents for recovery

Important!

You cannot restore files to the same disk that you scanned! Otherwise, new files being written will overwrite old ones that have not yet been recovered.

Example: if you are recovering photos or documents from a flash drive, then save the found files to your hard drive; if you are recovering files from your hard drive, save them to a USB flash drive ...

By the way, if Recuva could not find any files for recovery on the disk, try using its analogue R.Saver (in some cases this utility shows much better results!). I have instructions on how to work with R.Saver on my blog - //ocomp.info/kak-vosstanovit-foto-s-sd-karty.html

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PS

Always make a backup (a backup copy) of all important (and not so) documents: they can be copied to a USB flash drive, sent to e-mail, uploaded to the cloud, etc. A timely backup will save time, money, and nerves ... ✔

That's all, good luck!

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First published: 05.24.017

Correction of the article: 01/10/2019

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