There are a few different computer-related disasters that can quickly drain the colour from your face. These include pressing Reply All rather than just Reply, realising that the hard drive that just failed contained videos and photos you hadn’t backed up, or that fateful moment when a document you’ve been busily working on suddenly disappears, either because your Mac crashed or froze, or because you forgot to save, or accidentally clicked on delete. In the case of the latter all might not be lost, and we’ll show you how you might recover that vanished Word missive once more. If it’s not a Word document you’ve lost one of these articles might be helpful: or Before you panic, there is a reasonably good chance that you can get your document back.
Dec 21, 2018 - You can recover accidentally deleted, formatted saved and unsaved word, excel and powerpoint files for Mac using do-it-yourself software.
We’ll run through a few options below that might work for you. Step 1: Check the Trash In some cases, your file might be missing because you deleted it by accident. It’s easily done when you are in a hurry and in a moment of madness, while closing multiple documents, you click on Delete when you meant to Save. This isn’t as disastrous as it sounds, as the document might be found in the Trash. To check if this is the case go to the Trash can icon in the dock and double click. You’ll now see the contents of the trash.
Look for your file and if it’s there you’ll need to highlight it, right-click, then select Put Back. This will place the file back in the folder where it was originally saved and you can open it once more. Step 2: Recover your documents using Time Machine If everything is working as it should then it’s quite hard to lose a file in Word. The autosave feature means that in the event of an accident you should still have the bulk of your work, except for the last ten minutes. Of course, there are occasions when things don’t work as they should, and in that case you’ll need to turn to your backups.
If you’re using Time Machine to back up your Mac then you’ll be able to roll back to the when the file was still on your system. Follow our for instructions on how to recover your files. If you are unfortunate enough not to have a backup routine then we suggest beginning one immediately.
Macs are very reliable machines, but there is always a risk of something going wrong, so it’s best to protect yourself against potential disaster. Try looking at our feature that highlights several solutions for this essential practice. Step 3: Look for the file in the Word AutoRecovery folder Word for Mac has a built-in autosave feature called AutoRecover which is on by default. This means that Word is quietly saving the document you are working on without you needing to manually tell the software to do so. For this feature to function properly you’ll need to initially save the document with a name, then Word will make incremental saves every ten minutes. If the document was lost because your computer or software shut down unexpectedly then you should be prompted with a recovered file when you relaunch Word.
If for some reason this isn’t the case then you still might be able to find a version of it in the AutoRecover folder. The way this works depends on the version of Word for Mac you are using.
We’ll look at each separately below. Want to get to know Word better? How to find the AutoRecovery folder in Word 2011 If you are using Word 2011 it’s easy to locate the AutoRecovery folder:.
Click on the File option in the Menu bar then search for Autorecover. If you use Word often then there might be a few different Autorecover files, so check the date to see which one matches your missing item. Once you’ve found the document just click on it to open it up, then remember to save it again under a new name. Even if you don’t find your document in the AutoRecovery folder, it may not be the case that they aren’t there. Files in the AutoRecover folder don’t always show up. We have first hand experience of this. In the past, our Mac has ‘helpfully’ saved a Word document in the Office 2011 AutoRecovery folder.
This would not be an issue, except for the fact that when we then accessed the folder (just a quick search in Spotlight for Office 2011 AutoRecovery) the files were nowhere to be seen. As you can see from this screen grab, the most recent file in our AutoRecovery folder wass from 5 March, but we know that there are more recent files saved there.
The problem with the AutoRecovery file is that it is located in a Library folder that isn’t visible by default, and that will have some impact on whether your files are visible or not. Fortunately there is a way to locate the file.
Here’s how How to view files in Office 2011 AutoRecovery folder. Go to the Finder, and press Alt (or Option) while selecting Go from the menu at the top of the page. This will make the Library folder visible (if you don’t press Alt you won’t see it – and you have to keep Alt pressed or it will vanish). Next go to the following folders: Application Support Microsoft Office Office 2011 AutoRecovery.
When you see the Office 2011 in this view you will be able to locate your file. How to find the AutoRecovery folder in Word 2016 Those using Word 2016 have more of a challenge on their hands. Here’s how to find AutoRecover in Word 2016:. In Word 2016, the AutoRecovery folder is buried deep in the system and requires your Mac to display hidden files, so the first step is to reveal these secret folders, to do so we recommend following our advice here:. With this done you’ll need to open Finder then click on the Home icon in the left-hand column (it’s usually accompanied by your name). Now navigate to the following folder: Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Word/Data/Library/Preferences/AutoRecovery/. If you have any AutoRecovery files then they will be in here.
![How do you recover unsaved word documents for mac mac How do you recover unsaved word documents for mac mac](/uploads/1/2/5/3/125387359/296781587.jpg)
One thing to remember is that AutoRecovery files are temporary and only exist if they think that Word shut down unexpectedly. So, if you clicked Delete rather than Save when you were closing the document there won’t be an AutoRecovery file for it. Step 4: Look in the Temporary folder Your Mac also has a folder where it might temporarily keep files. The Temporary folder isn’t easy to find though.
To find the Temporary folder, use Terminal (find it in Applications Utilities Terminal, or Spotlight search for Terminal by pressing Command + Space. Open Terminal. Type: open $TMPDIR. Press Enter.
Inside this TMP folder you’ll should find a folder called Temporaryitems. It’s possible that your document might be inside.
Tips to avoid lost Word files Save first, Save often It goes without saying that you should save frequently especially if your Mac can be a bit unreliable. You may be able to rely on Word autosaving for you, but remember that you have to save the file first to really benefit from Autosave.
Changing the autosave frequency A helpful thing to know is that you can reduce the gaps between autosaves on Word for Mac. By default they are set at ten minute intervals, but it’s easy to make them more frequent. In Word go up to the Menu bar at the top of the screen and click on Word. From the dropdown menu select Preferences and then in the Output and Sharing section you’ll see a disk icon named Save. Click this and you’ll now be able to adjust the time between saves by entering a value into the ‘Save every X minutes’ box at the bottom. While it might be tempting to set it as low as possible, bear in mind that Word’s performance will be hampered slightly if it’s saving every minute, especially if you are working on a big file.
Experiment to see what setting works best for you.
. The first thing you should search for your Word documents and get it back.
Click Start Search and type the name of your document (or at least a part of it) or simply.doc(x) to get all your Word documents. How to Recover Unsaved Word Document While you working and creating a Word document and then it closed accidentally without saving it.
This situation will happen overtime, but take a deep breath, you can get your unsaved Word document back. Follow the next steps to recover an unsaved Word document by using Microsoft Word (Word 2010, Word 2013, and Word 2016).
Recover Unsaved Word Document from Temporary Files If you know well the address on your computer, you can go to the url: C: Users admin AppData Local Microsoft Office UnsavedFiles. Or you can follow the next steps to go on. Open a Word document files, and click 'File Tab';. Click Info Manager Versions the drop-down list;. Click ' Recover Unsaved Documents', it will pop-up a window which list all unsaved office files;. Select your file and click open button.
Search for AutoRecover Files You also can search for the Word backup files to recover unsaved Word document. Search for autorecover files, as following steps to know where the document was saved. The next steps we will perform recover Word document files in Microsoft 2016, if you are using other Microsoft version you can get more related solution from. On the File meun, click Options;. In the left navigation pane, click ' Save' section;.
You can change the time of automatically save a recoverable copy. ' Save AutoRecover information every N minutes' and click Ok. Recover Unsaved Word Files with Document Recovery While the computer suddenly crashed and the Word document files haven't saved. Re-open the Word Document, the file would appear on the left side of Document Recovery.
Double click on the files, you can get the unsaved Word document back. Open your recycle bin on the computer;. On the location, find your Word document and right-click on the files, click ' Restore' to recover deleted Word document. How to Recover Deleted or Lost Word Document with File Recovery Recoverit Data Recovery: The Best Word Document Recovery Software If you still did not manage to find the document you are looking for, here is our most powerful option. You should always save the best for last. If none of the previous methods work, you will have to use a data recovery tool. There are many tools available, the best file recovery we recommend, it can easily to help you recover deleted or lost WOrd document files back.
Easily and flexibly recover deleted Word document from computer. Recover deleted or lost Word document from computer and recycle bin effectively, safely and completely. Recover lost Word document files due to computer system crashed, application crashed and accidentally deleted. Recover unsaved Microsoft office document files (Word, Excel, PPT and PDF) with high success recovery rate. Supported OS: Windows 10/8/7/XP/Vista; Mac OS 10.13, macOS 10.12, OS X 10.11, 10.10, 10.9, 10.8, 10.7, 10.6.
Step 1 Select the scenario type you want to recover. You can go to select the option ' Deleted files Recovery' to get started. Step 2Select the location where your Word document files lost, you can go to scan whole computer. Step 3 The results from quick scan will show quickly. However, if you can't find your results, please use our ' All-Around Recovery' function Step 4 After deep scan, you can preview all recoverable Word document files and click ' Recover' button to save.
Recoverit Word Document Recovery can easily recover unsaved and deleted Word document files back. But you should save all recovered files on other location in cause of data loss again. All in all, with these 5 ways, you will have a chance to recover deleted word documents from one of these methods. You can try out all of the methods mentioned above. If you don't want to spend times on trying all the methods, the most efficient and easy way( ) is to try out a Word document recovery tool: to recover deleted Word documents. Download and try it for now.