Microsoft Word document is widely used in business, education and home for saving information. It is really a painful experience if someone lost an important Word file. Wondering how to retrieve the lost Word doc? Here is your answer. Read on to rescue now.
Sometimes, Microsoft Word documents may be closed accidentally because of computer faults, power interruption or human error while editing. If you close a Word document without saving changes, you can try the solutions below to recover unsaved Word document.
If you want to find the Word document saved somewhere you forget or accidently closed, please try the steps below. This method works better for the Word file you opened recently on the same computer.
It is widely known that Word automatically pops up recovery option if a document is closed with saving changes. That’s because AutoRecover is enabled by default. However, if the automatic recovery pane doesn’t appear, we can also recover unsaved word document manually from AutoRecover location.
Tips: MS Word autosaves the opened document usually by 10 minutes if you don’t save it manually. You can also specify a longer or shorter frequency for the autosave in File > Options > Save.
Check if you have enabled Backup for MS Word:
In MS Word, go to File > Options > Advanced, scroll down and check the Save section for the Always create backup copy box.
The backup copy should be saved on the location where you edit the original document, so you may check the folder even when you moved the document to a USB drive and deleted it.
If your important Word documents get lost due to error deleting, recycle bin emptying, mistaken formatting, or other unknown reasons, the best way is to use Jihosoft File Recovery to recover deleted Word document. It is professional Word Document Recovery software, which enables users to recover deleted Word DOC/DOCX documents from computer, external hard drive, USB drive or SD card without any difficulty.
Download File Recovery for Windows or Mac, then follow the steps below to recover deleted Excel, PDF or Word document:
Jihosoft File Recovery will launch automatically after installation. You can also run it from the desktop by double-clicking. Click Recover File to proceed.
Now you should see all the partitions detected by the program, including local disk, hard drive as well as removable disks. You need to select the partition where your Word files were deleted, then click Advance Scan to tick only the file types you need, like DOC/DOCX. Click Scan Now to proceed.
Once the scanning is finished, you can preview the found MS Word documents to check if you really need them. Tick only the data you need and click Recover button to get them out.
Important: Usually, your deleted Word document is not erased permanently. It still on the system and you can retrieve it with data recovery tool. But you shouldn’t use the drive or partition to store any new data after losing important Word document. Or the new data will overwrite the deleted Word doc and make it unrecoverable.
In addition to the above two cases, you may also need to recover a Word document which is corrupted due to any reasons.
In this tutorial, we have learnt how to recover unsaved, deleted or corrupted Word documents easily. Don’t forget to share this article to your friends if you find it useful. You can also leave a comment to tell us your questions or opinions.