Have you ever forgotten to save a document you were working on? Maybe you accidentally clicked the No button when prompted to save your spreadsheet on closing it? Lost power in the middle of working on an important presentation? Of course, we’ve all had something like this happen at some point….and most likely lost a lot of blood, sweat and tears recreating the work we had already done. (Man I HATE that!)
Well, the next time that happens you should know this handy trick for recovering unsaved Office documents. (Note that it’s not perfect but it has saved me hours of rework a few times.)
How It Works
Once you’ve realized you might have lost some unsaved work. Reopen Word, Excel, or Powerpoint and go to File » Open then look for the Recent tab.
Scroll down to the bottom or the files list and click the Recover Unsaved Presentations button.
If you’ve got any unsaved documents you’ll see them and get a 2nd chance at saving them before they’re gone forever!
If the document has never been saved, it might have some weird name so don’t ignore it without opening it to see if it is what you’re looking for.
This little trick is based on the AutoRecover function so don’t be surprised if your recovered document doesn’t have everything you’ve already done. Nothing you can do about that –other than remembering to save it in the first place! 😎