Recovering an unsaved MS Word document. Recovering an unsaved Word document How to recover a printed but not saved document

Have you ever encountered a situation where a .doc or .docx file could not be opened due to an error? Or completely lose a document on which a lot of hard and painstaking work has been done? Probably, most PC users have encountered such a situation, and if not, then an article on this topic will still be interesting for them, since you need to be prepared for anything.

So, let's look at several ways to recover a lost or damaged Microsoft Word file.

How to recover text from a damaged Word document

If the document is damaged, the user may encounter the following error:

If you have checked and ensured that you have permission to access the document and the disk, and are sure that there is enough space and memory on the disk, then the next step is to use the built-in recovery function in Word to get the text of the document back.

To do this:

• Open Word and select the File / Open / Browse tab

• Find the file you want to open and select Recover text from any file from the pop-up menu. Click Open.

Sometimes, despite the recovery process, the file may remain damaged even if the file is successfully restored and opened. Formatting will be lost.

Another way to recover

If the above method does not work, Microsoft has provided another way to recover your Word file. To do this, go to the File / Open tab.

In the window that opens, select your document.

Click the Open button and select the “Open and Repair” option.

If you see the message when opening a document, you should install the latest version of the program.

Restore a backup copy of your Word document

If it is not possible to even find the file, you can try to detect a backup copy of the file created by Microsoft Word. This can be done as follows.

Select File/Open/Browse.

Go to the folder where the lost file was located. In the file type selection window, select “All files (*.*).” Usually the backup file is called “Backup…” + file name. Select and open such a file.

If it was not possible to detect a backup copy of the file in this way, then enter *.wbk (backup file format - Word Backup files) in the Windows search box. But in this case, the names of the backup files will not necessarily match the name of the lost file. Try opening *.wbk files one by one until you find the one you need.

Find and restore an autosaved copy of a file

If your computer is not configured to back up Microsoft Word document files, try restoring the document from AutoSave files.

Autosave files can be checked in the following folder:

• C:\Users\ Name User \AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Word

The name of the autocopy file will begin with “Autocopy...” and will be in *.asd format. Just click on the autocopy of the file and it will open as a Microsoft Word document.

Programs for recovering Microsoft Office documents

If none of the proposed functions brings the desired result, then you can try to recover the lost file from any of the Microsoft Office programs using one of the many programs for recovering deleted documents.

Fortunately, the choice today is huge. The only advice is to choose a simpler program that specializes in recovering files in the Microsoft Office package format. Since different algorithms are often used to restore image files and documents, and accordingly, the quality of recovery can vary significantly.

As an example we can consider Hetman Office Recovery. Already from the name you can understand that the program specializes in recovering Microsoft Office format files. To recover your Word file, simply download and run the program, and use it to scan the disk on which the document was lost.

As a result of scanning, the program will display the found documents with original names. You can view their contents in the preview window. To restore the desired file, just mark it with a checkmark and click the “Next” button.

Have a great day!

There is an hour left before you submit or send a document that you have been working on for many days, and now, instead of saving all the changes, you forget to save it, or the program closes itself. This has happened to many. This is just one of many scenarios that happen to even very experienced PC users. Fortunately, Microsoft has a mechanism for recovering documents lost before they were saved.

Step 1. Open a blank word document. Go to the "File" menu on the top panel.

Step 2. A horizontal menu will open in front of you with all the parameters related to saving, printing and other actions with the document. Go to details.

Step 3. So, in the Details section, you will see the document management area.

Click on the button as shown in the screenshot and in the pop-up menu select the option that suits you, in our case it is recovery.

Step 4. A new window will open on your screen with all the files that you did not have time or could not save in time. Select the required document and open it.

Step 5. The file you select will open in Word. Save it.

Note! The folder with unsaved documents displays only those that were lost no later than 4 days ago. After this period, all unsaved documents are permanently deleted from your computer.

Where are the unsaved documents located?

The AutoSave feature was introduced in 2010 versions of Office software. If you're working on an older computer with older versions of software, there's space on your Windows hard drive that holds four days' worth of unsaved Office files. You can't move files out of this area, but you can open and access them for later saving.

There is an easier way, enter the word “Unsaved” in the search bar of the Start menu. The system will find the corresponding folder for you. Open it and view the contents.

In fact, this is where the system directs you when you try to recover a document using Word AutoRecovery. Again, you will see in the folder everything that was created no more than 4 days ago.

As you can see, documents that you did not manage to save are not deleted from your computer, they do not disappear into nowhere, but are stored on the computer for some time. You can also open them using the standard Notepad program if Word is not doing its job. Unfortunately, in this case you will lose the graphics and formatting, keeping only the text, but in many cases this is already a big deal.

Option 2: Recover Lost Word Documents Using EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard

No matter which version of Word you are using, it is really difficult to complete the entire repair process using the Microsoft Office guides listed above. EaseUS allows Word users to recover deleted documents in just three steps. Among other functions performed by this program are the following:

• Windows recovery;
• search for USB files;
• search for lost Word documents, etc.

All this can be easily done using this program. Even a beginner can handle this tool. It is applicable to Word 2013, 2001, 2007, 2003, 2002.

Note! This is paid software. However, you can download and use the trial version. You don't even need to register for a trial.

Step 1. Download, install and run the program, select the drive where the unsaved documents were supposedly located, and click on the “Scan” button to find all Word documents.

Step 2. The general scan will begin first. Upon completion, a deep scan will automatically start, helping to find more documents.

Step 3. Once the program scans your hard drive, browse through all the recovered Word documents and select the ones you want to keep. After that, by clicking on the “Restore” button, return them back.

EaseUS document recovery software is much easier to use than any other program in this category. It is, as the name suggests, designed to make people's lives easier.

For the future

Of course, prevention is always the best way to avoid losing data. It starts with careful and regular conservation. Don't be lazy and do this even when you leave the computer to, for example, make tea or coffee or answer a call. This can protect you from future information loss. Although the software saves files to AutoSave from time to time, it cannot save everything. Most often, computers have a standard interval of 10 minutes. So there is a risk of losing the data you entered 10 minutes before the document was unsuccessfully closed.

If the file was ready to autosave and you closed it, you will lose the last nine minutes of work. You can change this setting so that autosave occurs more frequently.

Step 1. In older versions of the software, open Help from the File menu. In this section, select Options. In newer software, go to File > Options.

Step 2. Go to your save settings and change them as you wish. Don't forget to save the changes you made.

This mode remembers the latest version with autosave, even if you close the entire file before saving. This feature is present in all Microsoft office products.

Video - How to recover an unsaved or damaged Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint document

A very pressing question for many users is how to recover a damaged Word document, or how to recover a lost document. I think everyone has had such a problem as losing a document. For example, you were typing something important in the program, a crash occurred, Microsoft Word crashed (closed), and after opening you find nothing, or the document does not open at all. To prevent this from happening in the future, I have prepared an article where I will show what you can use to restore a damaged version of a document.

How to recover a damaged Word document?

Let's say you tried to run a document file and saw the following error message.

This error already contains several recommendations from which you can understand what to do, for example, make sure that there is enough disk space, whether you have permission to use the document and edit it.

In this case, we can return the document using Word itself. Just open the icon of this program so that Word starts, and then go to the item on the left "Open" and select "Review".

In the explorer that opens, look for the document you want to open, click on it once so that its name appears in the field "File name". Next, you select the item from the drop-down menu "Recover text from any file" and click “Open”.

If the document is very large and you have used many design styles, it is not always successfully restored. Sometimes part of the text disappears, or there is text, but without formatting styles. The main thing, of course, is to restore the integrity of the document.

How to recover a Word document [Second method]

From what has been said above, it is clear that the first method does not always help, although it is worth using it. Let's move on to the next method.

Open Microsoft Word again and go to the File menu, then “Open” and the button "Review". Find the damaged document and click on it. Then click on the arrow where the “Open” button is and select the option there "Open and restore".

How to restore a Word backup?

Sometimes a file may get lost and you cannot find it anywhere. In this case, the program usually creates backup copies of the document; to open it, you need to proceed as follows:

Open Word and go to the “Open” section, then click on “Browse”. Remember where you saved the document and go to that folder. In the pop-up tab, select "All files", look for the lost document. Focus on the name and date. Sometimes such a document may be called “Backup copy...”.

If you fail, you can go another way. Open the search field in Windows and enter the extension of the Word backup file - *.wbk. It is more likely that such a file will be opened, but the point is that there may be more than one and the names may not match, so you will have to open and look at each one.

Autosave in Word, or how to restore a saved copy of a document

Typically, the program automatically creates backup copies of the document after a certain period of time. They are usually found along the following path: C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Word.

Autosaved document names can begin with the word "Autocopy...", and the format of such files will be *.asd. To open such a file, you need to double-click on it.

Bonus option – Word file recovery program

I myself have never been interested in third-party Word recovery programs, but they can help if none of the above methods worked. As an example, I can cite the Hetman Office Recovery program. The utility, unfortunately, is paid; perhaps there are analogues, which I will include in this article. To use Hetman Office Recovery, just install it on your computer and check the disk for lost and damaged documents.

The program will find documents and show them in its window with real names. If you want to restore something, you select them with ticks, then it’s a matter of little things.

Instructions

Find backups of files that may have been created by Word. Click the Start button on your desktop, then select Search. Type *.WBK in the search field, press Enter and view the results of the found files.

Use the AutoSave feature in Word. Open the "File" menu and select the "Open" function. Find the file you want to restore in the folder that appears, and if you succeed, click on the “Open and Restore” button.

Try looking for files that may have been left on your hard drive during autosave in a different location or in a different format. Click the Start button on your desktop and select Search. Type *.ASD in the search bar, press Enter and scroll down the list of results found.

Find files that may have been saved as temporary. Through the Start menu and using the Search function, look for documents with the *.TMP mask. This is a temporary file format that can be opened using an appropriate text editor program.

Go to the Recycle Bin and see if there are any files there that can be deleted by the system. To do this, click on the “Trash” icon on your desktop. Select View and Arrange Icons. Select the By Date option to quickly find any files that may have been posted here over the next few days.

Useful advice

In Microsoft Word, make sure that the AutoSave feature is turned on and working properly to prevent documents from being lost if the program is suddenly closed. To do this, go to “Options” and select the “Saving” tab. Specify the time intervals at which documents will be automatically saved. You can also select the default folder where archived copies will be sent.

Often, when a document has already been signed, it is necessary to correct an annoying typo or add a missing letter. This must be done in order not to spoil the image of yourself for those to whom a scanned copy of the document is sent. If the document must be sent in printed form, corrections are not possible, but if you have to send a scanned copy of it, you can always correct errors in the text.

Instructions

Open the sheet you want to fix in the Paint editor. If the paper turns out not white but slightly dark, use the Microsoft editor to lighten the background, then open it in Paint.

Locate the location of the typo or missing character. Use an eraser to erase the unnecessary letter. Make sure that the white mark that remains after the eraser does not stand out against the general background.

Use the copy tool. Using this tool, circle the letter that needs to be replaced in place of the erased one. Copy it and carefully paste it into the place you cleaned up with the eraser. Make sure that the height of the letter is at the same level as the height of nearby ones, and the distance to other letters is equal.

Repeat the previous step until you have completely corrected the desired piece of text. After that, check that the color of the letters you inserted matches the color of the others that you did not touch. If you scanned at a good resolution, this shouldn't be a problem. Reduce the document size by two to three times and save it as a .jpg file.

In order to hide the traces of adjustment as much as possible, use JPGtoPDF converter. Convert the image to a pdf file and send it to the sender.

In the process of transferring data from media to media, storing it on a hard drive for a long time, or sending files over the Internet, there are frequent cases of loss of information integrity. Archives damaged in this way cannot be opened in the standard way, and their contents become unavailable even for viewing.

You will need

• - computer;
• - Internet;
• - Recovery Toolbox for RAR program.

Instructions

The Recovery Toolbox for RAR utility was created specifically to solve such problems. Download the distribution from the Internet and install the Recovery Toolbox for RAR application. Launch the program by double-clicking on the Recovery Toolbox shortcut. Do not forget that such software must be installed on the system local drive of the hard drive.

Follow the instructions of the Archive Recovery Wizard. First of all, tell the program the file you want to restore. Click the Next button and the program will begin checking the damaged archive. This procedure can take quite a long time, which depends on the size of the information being restored and the speed of the computer itself.

After analysis, the program will display a list of files that were found in the archive. The view is very similar to Explorer and you can easily figure it out. In addition, each file is marked with a special colored icon, indicating with what degree of probability it will be possible to recover the damaged file. You can sort all lists in the program to make it easier to view information.

Check the boxes indicating the files you want to restore. Specify a folder to store files after the recovery procedure and click Next. Wait for the program to report on the completion of the task. The utility is equally effective for archive files of any compression level, as well as for password-protected archives. The utility can also work with files over the network and successfully restores the contents of archives of any size. In general, we can say that installing damaged files on a computer is not so difficult; the main thing is to know the algorithms for performing a particular operation.

Often, a personal computer user encounters problems with unreadable files. This may be due to improper completion or saving of documents, corruption of the hard drive file system, etc. It is quite difficult to restore such files, but there is always a chance of a successful outcome in the current situation.

We can safely say that every user is familiar with this terrible scenario. You are working on a file, not touching anyone, and suddenly the Word application (Excel, PowerPoint or any other) freezes completely, crashes, or your computer crashes. The file, of course, was not saved in time and all the work was lost. Similar situations happen to everyone. Fortunately, Microsoft, the creator of the office suite, which includes Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and so on, has taken care of a whole set of file recovery mechanisms. You can not only recover an unsaved document file, but also extract information from damaged or lost file. This instruction will tell you more about how to recover a document in Word. Although this article focuses primarily on Word, similar techniques can be applied to other programs in the Office suite. The details may vary, but the principle is generally the same.

Please note: in this article we are not talking about how to restore deleted file. To avoid the need to recover deleted files, always make backup copies, store important information in the cloud, or activate the . First of all, this article will describe the recovery procedure unsaved information V existing file.

For reference: The instructions describe the procedure for restoring files in the current version of Office 365 at the beginning of 2018 (Word 2016, build December 2017). The restore feature has been present in Office for a long time, so the principle described in this article will help you get back unsaved work in previous versions of Office, like 2013, 2010, or 2007.

How to Recover an Unsaved Microsoft Word Document

Let’s say the electricity went out, the computer turned off, or Word froze and you had to “cancel the task.” First of all, launch the application back. In the side menu, you'll immediately notice that "Word has recovered files you may have wanted to keep." Click Show recovered files.

A new document will open and a list of versions available for recovery will be displayed on the left side. Select the one you need and save it.

If the app doesn't offer you this option, try a different approach. Open Word, click File – Details – Document Management – ​​Recover Unsaved Documents.

Word will open an Explorer window containing a list autosave recent documents you have worked with. All of them are available in .asd format. Please note that you will also have the option to delete all unsaved files that are placed in backup storage. This button will only be available when opening a new document.

As you've probably already realized, Office automatically makes a temporary copy of files on your computer's hard drive so you can recover even files that have never been saved. The standard autosave period is 10 minutes. This means that every 10 minutes Word will create a copy of your document, necessary in case of recovery.

How to set up automatic saving in Word

10 minutes is a very long time, so many users prefer to reduce it. And yes, the auto-save feature is always enabled by default. There is no need to turn it off.

Open menu File and press Options. A window with Word application settings will open. In the left menu, find the tab Saving.

You need a parameter Autosave every. Change the auto-save interval to whatever you prefer. For example, 3 minutes. Here you can configure the location of temporary autosave files.

You can set the autosave period from 1 minute to 120 minutes (2 hours). Practice shows that automatic saving does not in any way affect your work and does not degrade the performance of the application. Microsoft engineers did a very good job on this feature, so the rule of thumb is “less is more.” The shorter the interval you have between backups, the less work you'll have to redo after a sudden shutdown.

Autosave documents to OneDrive

Recently (at the time of writing), Office 365 has introduced a wonderful feature to automatically save all objects located in the OneDrive cloud. With this feature, you won't have to worry about saving your files at all. If the object is in your cloud, Word, Excel and PowerPoint will automatically save each your action. You just need to make sure that the switch Autosave in the upper left corner of the window will move to the position included(white fill with a bird).

Please note that this feature works only for files saved in the cloud. Local files, as well as new documents that have not yet been saved, must be saved in the traditional way or use the automatic saving function. We recommend keeping all documents in the cloud. In this case, you will have nothing to fear at all. All changes will be saved on the go, and a file lost from your computer can be easily restored from the cloud. Profit.

How to recover a damaged Word document

Losing a saved work and a damaged object are two completely different things. In the second case, the problem is much more serious, since the work is saved in a file that itself is damaged and cannot be opened. Fortunately, appropriate recovery mechanisms are provided for such a case as well. The only catch is that their quality of work will depend on how badly the object is damaged.

When trying to open a file, you may be greeted with the following error: “Word has an error trying to open the file. Try the following: Check document and disk permissions. Check if you have enough memory and disk space. Open the file using a backup converter."

Don't panic. First of all, you need to really check whether you have rights to this file, and also check the status of your computer's drive. If all these parameters pass the test, proceed to attempts to recover the damaged document.

Another way to recover a damaged document

It is possible that the method above did not work. Don't despair. You still have a way to extract information from a damaged document.

Trust that Word is up to the task.

How to Recover a Lost Word Document

This is also a very familiar scenario that many users have encountered (including the author of the article). You try to open a file, but Word tells you that it has been moved, renamed, or deleted. If trying to find the file you need does not lead to anything, you will have to use mechanisms for restoring backup copies of documents. These instructions are valid for Word 2016.

1. Click File – Open – Browse. Open a File Explorer window to the last location where the last copy of the file was located.
2. From the file type drop-down menu (the line to the right of the file name field), select All files. A file called “Backup of file name" Click on it and open it. If it's not there, try searching for files with the .wbk extension on your computer. and open the found objects.

In this case, it will be a little more difficult to find the file you need (especially if you have a lot of them), since wbk files do not display the exact name of your document. You will have to search each of the documents you find, but there is a good chance that you will be able to find the object you need.

If this method does not help you find the file you need, it is best to use a utility to recover information deleted from the disk, but this is a topic for a separate article. To avoid such unpleasant stressful situations, you should always store files in a safe place, make backup copies and use recovery systems. But even the most reliable systems fail, so Word’s built-in file recovery mechanisms will come to your aid at any time.