Didn't save changes in word. How to recover Word files
Two sad stories are forever imprinted in my memory when I missed the “Save” button at the most crucial moment. Once they just started talking to me, and the second time I was in such a hurry that I finished my work standing at the computer, already dressed. Distractions and exceeding a reasonable speed cost a lot of nerves back then.
Surely similar office disasters have happened in your life, after which you wanted to give free rein to your feelings and show the stupid machine who’s boss. Exactly like in the old popular video.
But you restrained yourself, realizing that next time, instead of your native Mac, you would receive an import-substituting Elbrus. How to protect yourself from a state of passion and not become a laughing stock as a sanctions victim? It is enough to know that Word, contrary to your wishes, still keeps in reserve what you decided to refuse (whether it was consciously or mistakenly).
Open the main text editor window and go to the first section, Details. Click on the “Document Management” icon, where you will find the coveted function.
Click on the “Recover unsaved documents” option, after which you will see a Word service folder with several files whose existence you have already forgotten.
I hope that you will be lucky and you will return the entire document from oblivion, and at worst, most of it. But it is important to understand that luck will smile on you only if in the settings of the program itself there is a checkbox “Save the last autosaved version when closing without saving.” The width of the smile directly depends on the autosave interval.
If I'm not mistaken, the saving feature is enabled by default. But the interval set is not the most optimal. I recommend reducing it to 2-3 minutes.
A very pressing question for many users is how to recover a damaged Word document, or how. 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.
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”.
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.
This often happens to me when you type some text in Word, and the program starts to freeze and does not leave. That is, nothing can be done other than forcing the program to terminate. Sometimes even the program itself crashes. On the Internet, many users are also tormented by this question.
Today I will analyze this issue using Word 2013 as an example, since in other versions of Word, such as 2010, the problem is solved in a similar way. By the way, we will analyze the autosave function.
How to recover an unsaved Word document?
The Microsoft Office 2013 software package has a so-called autosave function, which saves copies of a document at a certain point in time. As soon as the program freezes and completes its work, after restarting it, the left panel “Document Recovery” should display all the documents that were previously saved. Double-click on the last document, it should open.
By the way, it also happened that the text that was saved during autosave did not open completely after a critical termination of MS Word; some fragments were not saved in time.
So, if the saved document does not start when you try to open it, then go to "File" → "Intelligence" → "Versions" → "Recover Unsaved Documents". A window should open where all saved documents will be located.
This window will contain files with an unknown extension. .asd, these files are Word recovery files. If the file has not yet been saved by the user, then it will have a name something like this: "Autorecovery save of Document1.asd".
Try opening such a document through Word. If a document is damaged, you can use the file recovery function "Open and restore".
Typically, autosave copies are stored for only 4 days and then deleted, therefore, it is better to save them yourself via “File” and “Save As”.
As I said, autosaving occurs at some point in time, by default it is once every 10 minutes, but this value can be changed. To set up autosave you need to go to "File", "Options" And "Preservation".
That's all, now you know about automatic saving in Word and how you can restore an unsaved document. I advise you to set the autosave frequency to less than 10 minutes, because if the program freezes, most of the document will have time to be saved.
