While MS office gives you an option to recover files being used and unsaved if the program crashes or is forced stopped. Recovering mistakenly closed files without saving is not so obvious. While there are a couple of options, they are hidden and not obvious or intuitive.
I learned this stuff the hard way. Hopefully this helps you salvage your files. The following is true for Office 2010.
Recover unsaved Office files if they are mistakenly closed before saving it:
- Open the Office application > File > Recent > Recover Unsaved Documents/Workbooks/Presentations (option / icon under Recent places)
If you still don’t get the file, try the following using the ‘Auto Save / Recover’ feature
- Open the Office application > File > Info > Manage Versions > Recover Unsaved Documents/Workbooks/Presentations
If you still don’t get the file, try the following…
- Open the Office application > File > Info > Manage Versions > Select the folder path under – Recover Unsaved Documents/Workbooks/Presentations – Type it into the browser and check if your file is there
- Open the Office application > File > Help > Save > Select the folder path under – Auto Recover file location – Type it into the browser and check if your file is there
- It’s extremely likely that you’ll find your files here under a folder
By the way, its a good practice to make sure the Save AutoRecover information every x minutes check box is selected in the above step. Set the time depending on your liking. Also, make sure the Keep the last autosaved version if I close without saving check box is selected.
