How To Recover Unsaved Word Documents In MS Office 2019, 2016?

Why Recover Deleted Word Documents?

MS Office provides a diverse application suite to make tasks more productive. However, sometimes our Word documents get accidentally deleted or lost due to a sudden power outage. Thus, a need arises to protect our documents. Some more reasons for this are:

• To protect Word documents from being corrupted or crashed.
• Securing our essential data from viruses, threats, or malware.
• Most importantly, for saving our Word files and their content.

How to Recover Unsaved Word Documents?

You might be waiting to know how to retrieve unsaved Word documents. There are different manual methods and an automated tool. The detailed step-by-step procedure for all methods is discussed below. But, before that, search for the basic options:

• Check your Recycle Bin, in case your file is still there when deleted.
• In case of a sudden crash or shutdown, restart your system and open Word. The autosaved file will be present in the Document Recovery pane at the left. Click Open to restore it. (or)
• Simply Create and Record MS Word Macro to find your task for the last unsaved Word document.

Let’s get started with the methods now.

Method 1: Restore Word Documents Using AutoRecover Folder

Particularly, it involves three stages. Follow the steps given below:

1. Searching Folder Path

Firstly, check the folder locations for backup files following the path below to recover unsaved Word documents and save them:




If you still cannot find them, then you can try the manual way by searching for AutoRecover files.

2. Searching .asd Format Files

The AutoRecover feature stores files in .asd. Therefore, search for it by following these steps:

1. Open File Explorer and search (.asd) in the Search box.
2. Afterward, if you find any file, open Word and go to the File tab.
3. Furthermore, select Open and click Browse.
4. Then, choose All Files from the file type list next to the filename.


5. At last, right-click the .asd file you found earlier, and click Open.

Additionally, if your AutoRecover is not on beforehand you can follow these steps to turn it on.

Turn AutoRecover On

1. Launch Word, navigate to File > click Options >select Save.
2. Checkbox Save AutoRecover information and Keep the last autosaved version.
3. At last, click OK to save changes.

Method 2: Recover Word Document Not Saved With Word Backup Files

As AutoRecover saves files in (.asd) format. Similarly, WordBackup saves files in (.wbk) format. It requires the backup option in Word to be on. To check it, follow the steps:

1. Open MS Word > File > go to Options > click Advanced.
2. Go to the Save section and click Always Create Backup Copy.
3. Next, open File Explorer, and in the Search box, type (.wbk). If any file exists, double-click and choose Open.

Method 3: Recover Unsaved Word Document By Auto Save Feature

Follow the steps below:

1. In the first step, launch Microsoft Word.
2. Then, go to the File tab in the taskbar and click Info.
3. Further, click Manage Document and select Recover Unsaved Documents.


4. On receiving the file, click the Save As button to restore.

Method 4: How to Open Unsaved Word Documents from Temporary Files

The temporary files have an extension (.tmp). To find Word files, follow the steps:

1. Press Windows + R, type %temp%, and click Ok.
2. Next, open Word > File > click Open > click Browse.
3. Subsequently, select All Files from the file type list on the right of the filename.
4. Lastly, select your (.tmp) files and click Open.

Professional Tool to Recover Unsaved Word Documents

We need to restore our important files without any damage or data loss. For this, MS Word Repair Tool is a comprehensive solution. It has many features that make it preferable, such as:

• Recovers MS Word files efficiently within seconds in bulk.
• It is compatible with all the versions of the system.
• In addition, it is user-friendly and maintains data integrity.
• It can easily solve A File Error has Occurred problem.

How to Get Back Word Document Not Saved?- Stepwise Procedure

1. Download and install the tool on your system. Run it as an administrator.
2. After that, select the word files to add and click Next.
3. Next, you can now preview the selected files in the window. Click Next to save added data and continue with the process.


4. Furthermore, browse and select the path to save your resultant Word file. Click OK.


5. Lastly, hit the Save button to complete the process.

Conclusion

Overall, the process of finding unsaved or deleted Word documents is very crucial. You can manually restore it from File Explorer or Word itself. However, for a more robust and secure solution to recover unsaved Word documents, go for the suggested professional tool. It can fix your corrupt files, and recover deleted and unsaved documents quickly without affecting data integrity.

Frequently Asked Questions

About The Author:

Simran Bhatia

Simran Bhatia is a technical content writer engaged in writing clear, concise, and SEO-optimized content. With a background in computer science and a passion for writing, I thrive to deliver complex technical content in simple layman terms.