Hello everybody!
This video will show you how to recover an unsaved, damaged or lost Microsoft Word document,
Microsoft Excel worksheet or PowerPoint presentation.
This video will be useful in case if you closed a document by accident and forgot to save
it, there was a software failure, or the laptop battery went flat before you could save a
document, or if you run into an error when trying to open a document, worksheet or presentation.
I will demonstrate document recovery with the example of Microsoft Word, but these steps
will be the same for Excel and PowerPoint.
Many of us know that any program in the Microsoft Office package offers to save the original
document or an autosaved version of the file which was closed suddenly.
Such file will open automatically in the Document Recovery section after the program is started
again.
To recover such a file, click on the arrow next to the recovered file in the Document
Recovery pane and select Open or Save, or just click on it.
But this method is good only if a Microsoft Office program was closed unexpectedly.
It may happen if the computer shuts down or there is a power cut.
Please note: Word, Excel or PowerPoint suggest recovering files only at the first restart
of the program after an emergency shutdown.
That is, if you open Word, close it, and then open it again, it will not offer you anything.
That is why I recommend to save everything you need at the first start of the program
after the shutdown.
What should you do if you closed a document without saving it?
• For example, I have a document I have been working on.
• I close it.
• When asked if I want to save changes, I click “Don’t Save” as if accidentally.
• After that, I understand I was wrong, so I open the document again and see that
the last changes are gone.
To recover them: • Go to the tab File / Info
• Find the section Manage Document (Manage Workbook in Excel, or Manage Presentation
in PowerPoint) • I can see that the version of my document
closed wthout saving is shown there.
If there are several elements on the list and you don’t know which one to save, then
have a look at the date and time when autosaved documents were created.
It will help you understand which file to recover.
If you see several versions of the same file, it may be better to open the latest one because
it is likely to have the last changes.
• I click on it and I can see it is the actual unsaved version of the document.
• Click Restore • OK.
• The previously unsaved document (an Excel worksheet or PowerPoint presentation) is now
restored.
Please note that to be able to restore unsaved documents, the program should have autosave
settings activated.
By default, they are activated in all Microsoft Office programs, and to check them,
• Go to File / Options / Save • Make sure that Save Documents section
has checked boxes next to - Keep the last autosaved version if I close
without saving - Save Autorecover information every... - by
default, the option is 10 minutes, but I recommed the minimal setting - 1 minute.
If your computer shut down or restarted when working with a document, worksheet or a presentation,
or you haven’t restored the document offered by the program, and after you open it again,
there is no option to recover it, there is still another way to restore a document.
To do it: • Go to File / Options / Save
• In the section Save Documents (Workbooks or Presentations), find the Autorecover file
location • This is the folder where all autosaved
files of an open application are saved.
• Go there • To do it, copy the path to the folder
and insert it into the Windows file manager •
The folder that opens contains all copies of files created as a result of autosaving:
their names have the word Autosaved.
• There are also copies of unsaved files, the name sof which have the word Unsaved.
• You can find the necessary file by name and date.
• You can open such unsaved or autosaved files with the same program that created them:
Word, Excel or PowerPoint • Open the last autosaved copy of the file
• Restore • OK.
• The file has been restored.
If you haven’t found the necessary files of the unsaved or autosaved document (worksheet
or presentation) in the autorecover folder, you can also try restoring them with Hetman
Partition Recovery.
You may not find them in the said folder because the autosave file or an unsaved document copy
were created a long time ago and the program, may have deleted them already.
To recover them: • Run Hetman Partition Recovery
• Use it to scan the disk containing the autorecovery data (by default it is disk C)
• If Fast scan doesn’t help you to find the necessary files, use Full analysis for
your disk.
• When it is over, select Find File by clicking on a corresponding icon in the program’s
menu.
• Find the necessary files by their extension.
Please note that autosave files and copies of unsaved files have the following extensions:
For Word - .asd For Excel - .xlsb
For PowerPoint - .ppt You will find these extensions in the description
for this video.
• Select the necessary files and send them to Recovery list.
• After that click Recover and specify recovery settings.
• Ready.
• The files have been recovered.
• After that, you can open them and see if they are the ones you needed to recover.
If your document, worksheet or presentation is damaged after a computer failure or the
work of Hetman Partition Recovery, and you see an error when opening it, here is how
you can fix the problem: • Start the Microsoft Office program - in
our case, it is Word •
Open other documents • Browse
• In the menu on the right, select “Recover Text from Any File”
• Select the damaged file.
• In the appearing menu, select Open and Repair.
• Save the recovered file to a convenient location
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Thank you for watching and good luck!