How to recover an unsaved document in Word. Saving and auto-recovering documents in Word

To create any electronic document, a person spends a certain amount of time. And in the event of a software failure or power surge, all unsaved information may be lost. But there are options for restoring it. If you do a couple of simple steps, you can return most of the document. This article tells you how to recover an unsaved Word document.

Instructions

If you were working with a Word document, then you need to restart your personal computer and open Microsoft Word. The program will immediately prompt you about all unsaved documents in this format. Open it and find a more complete version of the document you need. It will be marked as "Recovered", copy the data and save.
What to do if the request does not appear, how to find an unsaved document? In Microsoft Word -> Tools tab -> Options -> Saving -> File locations and the path to all unsaved data will be indicated here. If you have Microsoft Word 2007 then you need to go to the following path: Microsoft Office -> Word Options -> Saving and find the necessary files.
There is a great feature such as auto save. If you do not have a checkmark in the box opposite this item every few minutes, then urgently correct this error and try to forcefully return the unsaved document. Call the file opening panel -> select your document -> click on the arrow in the right corner, Open -> Open and restore.
If this does not help, then you will have to restore and find the data manually. This is done as follows: Desktop -> Start -> Search -> parameter full file name or part of the name in *.ASD format -> My Computer -> Find.
If your personal computer does not find your file, return to Microsoft Word. Opening documents -> Files of type -> select all files (*.*). Find your document with *. asd and open it. Restart your personal computer, then open Microsoft Word again, your document will be on the left side, save it.
If you're unlucky again, try finding the document among the temporary tmp files. To do this, do the following: Start -> Search but in the parameters specify the *.TMP file and indicate the dates when the last changes were made. Open Microsoft Word again, select your document -> click on the arrow in the right corner, Open -> Open and restore.
As they say, hope dies last; there is another way to recover an unsaved document. A personal computer stores some temporary files with names starting with a tilde (~). Search -> change the *.TMP parameter to ~*.*, leaving the date change parameters the same, run the search. If your document is found, do the same with it as in the case described above.
How can you recover an unsaved document if you created it in another program? To do this, you will need to open Word Pad -> Accessories menu -> Start menu -> File -> Open -> enter the name of your document. The program will prompt you to convert the file, select no, and save the file using Word Pad.

Now you know how to recover an unsaved Microsoft Word document. If you did not save the data in any other application included in the Microsoft Office package, for example: Excel, Power Point, Access, then recovery is carried out in the same way. We wish you good luck and do not lose important information.

Good evening, dear readers of my blog! Surely, many of us have had a situation where we needed to create a giant document in Word. We worked and worked, printed and printed, tirelessly, and then BAM, and our electricity was cut off. At this moment we are ready to curse the whole world, but what to do? Is it possible to recover an unsaved Word document, and if so, how? I will answer these questions in today’s article, which is devoted to a very pressing issue: how to restore a Word document.

Let's start by answering the question of whether it is possible to restore a Word document: most often this is possible, but not always. If you haven’t changed the settings of this program before, then you shouldn’t have any problems: Word saved everything itself. And if they changed, then read on. It is quite possible that you will be able to recover a Word document.

So, enough "water", let's move on to action!

Instructions

First, try restarting your computer and starting Word again. It is quite possible that he himself will offer you to restore the unsaved document: you just need to select the latest version. If this does not happen, then look further.

In the main menu at the top, select “File” -> “Options”:

Then, in the “Save” tab, make sure that the “Auto-save every n minutes” checkbox is checked. If it is not there, then be sure to correct this omission:

So, if there is no checkmark, then it is unlikely that you will be able to restore an unsaved Word document. And if the checkbox was checked, now select “File” -> “Information”. Find the “Version Control” picture and select “Recover Unsaved Documents”.

I welcome you all to my blog again, dear friends and readers. Surely, you have experienced force majeure situations when you did not have time to save an important Word document. After that, as a rule, you just wanted to tear the hair out of your head out of anger that everything was lost and the text that was important to you was not recorded. But don’t rush to do this, because today I will tell you how to restore a Word document if you didn’t save it and accidentally closed it. I will show this whole thing in Word 2013, but these instructions can easily be used for other versions, such as 2007 and even 2016.

Many people are interested in the question of whether it is possible to recover an unsaved Word document. In most cases, this can of course be done, but in general I would advise you to just make it a habit to save the document at least once every five minutes. Don't be lazy. This won’t take up much of your time, and at least you won’t worry too much that some important information is missing. All you need to do is quickly click on the floppy disk icon or press CTRL+S.

Autosave

Unfortunately, there are many reasons why you may not have time to save important information:

Your computer has frozen, turned off or rebooted;
Accidentally closed the file and did not save it. Or they completely forgot to do it;
Error or program failure;
B much more.

But thank God, Microsoft is not stupid, and naturally they have provided for the possibility of some kind of failure, turning off the computer without saving the document. By default, the program automatically performs autosaving every 10 minutes. But if you think this is too much, then you can change this setting so as not to lose too much information in an accidentally closed document.

Instant Recovery

If you suddenly experience force majeure and your computer turns off, freezes, or reboots for unknown reasons, then Word provides an automatic recovery function, just for such cases.

All you have to do is go into Word as soon as your computer boots up. In this case, the program will automatically prompt you to restore unsaved documents with all your latest changes. Just click on the file that he offers you to return and save it. Only Word is a strict editor, and if you do not select document recovery this time, then the next time you start it it will not offer this.

Manual recovery

The undoubted advantage of Microsoft Word is that it is full of built-in tools for restoring unsaved closed documents. And this is great, because there are a lot of different situations. In general, let's get started with this method.

Return

And of course, we must not lose sight of the fact that files can be stupidly accidentally deleted. So if any important document has been deleted, try to restore it as soon as possible. I suggest you use one of them, but first of all I advise you to use Recuva. It is very easy, free and effective. I wrote about how to use it.

So what do you think? In my opinion, the guys from Microsoft did a good job of ensuring that users can restore an unsaved Word document if they suddenly forgot to remember it. And it’s really cool that you don’t even have to resort to the help of third-party programs, well, not counting recovery. These methods have helped me out more than once, so I think they will come in handy for you too). Although I hope that you won’t experience any problems.

And in order not to lose all your files from such failures, I advise you to view one cool course on data backup. Thanks to it, you will no longer worry about the safety of your files, so in the event of any force majeure, you will be able to restore everything. All lessons are well constructed and understandable for any level of user.

Personally, I hope that such incidents never arise for you. And if they arise, you can always fix it all and return the document with all the latest changes and edits.

Best regards, Dmitry Kostin.

In this lesson you will learn how to save Microsoft Word documents, and also learn how you can restore your work using the tool Auto recovery, if an emergency closure of the program occurs, the computer turns off and other unpleasant things happen.

When creating a new document, you first need to know how to save it in order to open and edit it later. As in previous versions of the program, Microsoft Word files can be saved on your computer. If desired, the document can be saved to OneDrive cloud storage, as well as exported and shared directly from Word.

OneDrive was formerly known as SkyDrive. There are no fundamental differences in the operation of these services, just a new name for an existing service. The name SkyDrive may still appear in some Microsoft products for some time.

Save and Save As

There are two ways to save a document in Microsoft Word: Save And Save as. These options work in the same way, with some differences.

Save: When creating or editing a document, use the command Save when you need to save changes. This command is used in most cases. The first time you save a document, you must name the file and specify a storage location on your computer. Next, when you press the command Save, the file is saved under the same name and in the same location.
Savehow about: This command is used to create a copy of a document when you want to keep the original file. Using the command Save as, you must assign a different name and/or change the storage location of the new file.

How to save a document

Remember to save changes when creating a new document or making changes to an existing file. Saving on time often prevents your work from being lost. Be sure to remember where you save your work so that it will be easier to find in the future.

Use Save As to create a copy

If you want to save a new version of a document while keeping the original, you can create a copy. For example, you have a file called “Sales Report”, you can save it as “Sales Report 2”. Now you can safely edit a copy of the file, while always being able to return to its original version.

How to change the default file save location

If you don't want to use OneDrive, you'll probably be disappointed because it's the default location to save your files. If it is inconvenient for you to select an item every time Computer, You can always change the default location to save files.

Automatic recovery

As you work on documents, Word automatically saves them to a temporary folder. It is possible to restore the file using Automatic recovery, in case you forget to save the changes or a crash occurs.

How to recover a document

By default, Word automatically saves every 10 minutes. If the document has been edited for less than 10 minutes, Word may not have time to autosave.

If you don't see the file you need, you can view all automatically saved files in Backstage view. Open the tab File, press Version management and then select Recover unsaved documents.

Computer power outages, critical errors that occur in the system, unintentional closing - all this leads to the fact that an unsaved Word document (doc or docx) may be lost. But almost any data can be recovered; the main requirement is to know the methods and be able to use a PC. The methods presented below are sorted by difficulty: from the simplest to the most complex. It is recommended to apply the options in order of priority.

Option 1: Automatically recover a Word document

The Word text editor has a built-in ability to automatically recover a document. If a system failure occurs that results in a forced reboot of Windows, the program itself will offer to return the lost information. It looks like this:

Comment. The Word text editor provides an automatic recovery option only when you first start the program. When you reopen the utility, nothing will be offered. Don't miss this chance.

If the user did not save the Word document before closing, then you can try to force open it again. There is an important detail here: the method will not work if the user created a new Word document, typed the text and saved it. Algorithm:

Create and open a blank sheet;
In the upper left corner, go to the “File” section and click open;
A window pops up in which you need to select “Open and restore”:

The most controversial method, since the effectiveness leaves much to be desired. In most cases, nothing happens to a clean file.

Option 2: Source file

Despite the lack of saving, the original Word file (doc or docx) could remain on the system. To find it, we use the following algorithm, consisting of two steps:

A list of files whose names match the entered keyword will appear. If the document is found, open it and view the contents.

Comment. This method is the simplest, but not ideal. The chance that the original document will remain on the computer after a critical error is extremely small.

Option 3: Autosave folder

Word (especially the latest versions) is quite smart. So, if the user did not change the standard parameters, then every 10 minutes the document is automatically saved to a specially designated folder, which is called reserve. The folder is hidden, so it is not certain that searching using the method described above will help, so you will have to check the contents manually. For this:

You can find the last saved file in the directory. The appearance may differ depending on the version. In Word 2010 the folder looks like this:

There is an alternative to this method. It consists of the following:

A few notes:

The method is only relevant if automatic saving of Word data is disabled;
You can restore a document in this way only after a forced shutdown of the system (voltage drop, critical error, etc.);
In order for a file to be added to a folder, the user must work with it for some time;
Unsaved files are presented in .asd, older versions (before 2010) of Word do not see this format.

This is where the main systemic methods end. Now let's talk about recovering Word information using third-party software.

Recovering a document using third-party programs

The method presented below will allow you to return a lost file from your device even in the most difficult situations: accidental deletion without placing it in the recycle bin, damage by a virus, formatting, etc.

In this case, third-party programs downloaded from the Internet are used for recovery ( It is advisable to check for malware with an antivirus). Here are some specialized applications:

7- Data Recovery. Among the advantages, multifunctionality should be noted: there are five options for recovering lost data. Despite the presence of the Russian language, the program is quite complex for inexperienced users;

Active Undelete. The most universal utility that works with all file systems, OS and supports most external devices. The interface is quite simple and perfect for beginners;

Wondershare Data Recovery. A powerful program that can recover any files both from a computer and from external media;
. Currently the leader in the Word file recovery segment.

Comment. The resources of all utilities are limited; if a large amount of data was written to a disk or flash drive after deleting an unsaved file, then you should not expect a positive result.

In order to recover a Word text document in .doc or .docx format, the latest Wondershare Data Recovery program is ideal.

The entire stage of working with the application consists of 3 steps: