How to recover Word that you have not saved?
One of the biggest concerns of users is usually that the option to save a document fails or the computer restarts suddenly while working on a Word file. Luckily, there are some ways to recover Word files, even when they haven’t been saved.
One of the big problems of those who work with Word documents is that the computer or the program closes without warning and without having saved the work. This is usually the most common cause of data loss among app users. In this sense, computers are often unpredictable; a voltage drop, a sudden blackout, a rise in CPU temperature or a kernel calculation error and the system restarts, making you lose hours of work.
Luckily, today there are ways to recover an unsaved Word document . Although many times it will not be possible to save the entire file, you will be able to recover a large part of the work done, since Word uses an autosave system in the background, which makes backup copies from time to time.
Next, let’s see how you can recover unsaved Word files. But before we start, you have to know that there are two ways to recover a Word document. The first one is to recover a file that has not been saved and the second one is based on configuring the autosave option of Word so that you never lose your work again.
On the other hand, you should be clear that each version of Microsoft Word has different options in its menus, so you may have to look for features in other menus.
Recover an unsaved Word from the menu
When closing any Word document, a context menu (a pop-up screen) always appears informing the user that the document will be closed without saving. Sometimes, whether in a hurry or by mistake, it is very possible that you close the document and hit the “Don’t Save” option, with which you will lose all the work that has not been saved.
Before, if this happened to us, we would lose all progress. Now, instead, it is possible to recover a previous version of Word. If you want to know how to recover an unsaved Word, you just have to open the file again, either from the application’s home screen or from the File menu itself, and there you will find the option “Recover unsaved documents” , just below the section where all saved files appear.
When you select the “Recover Unsaved Documents” option in Word, Windows Explorer will show you a hidden folder where the program saves different versions of your document as backup copies. To retrieve your work, simply select the most recent of all and continue working.
Although this folder is hidden, you can access it from Windows Explorer, for this you must write the command: “%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Office\UnsavedFiles” in the address bar of Explorer, to access all the temporary files of Word as well as the different versions that are stored using the application’s auto-save option.
Set up automatic saving for Microsoft Word
For some time now, Microsoft Word has had an automatic save system that allows you to automatically save your progress without having to pay attention. In this regard, Word has autosave set to make a copy every 10 minutes , which is too long for anyone working with this program.
In this sense, it is possible to configure how often the program will make an automatic copy. To do this, you must access the “Options” menu of Word, which appears within “File”.
Within “Options”, you will have to look for the “Save” section, which appears on the left side of the page. By accessing the save options you will find many different settings. Of all of them, the one that interests us is the one called: “Save AutoRecover information every…” . As a general rule, this option appears enabled and set to 10 minutes. To change the time it takes for Word to automatically save your work, you just have to change the number that appears in this section, using the arrows to go down or up.
In this sense, the minimum is one minute, so you can configure the autosave to make a backup every minute, so that, in the event of an accident, you lose as little information as possible.
What if my file is damaged?
In the case of damaged files, it is possible to use the Word text recovery converter tool , which allows you to recover as much information as possible from a damaged or corrupted file.
To do this, simply access “File” and search for “Options”. Next, the “Advanced Options” menu must be displayed and select the option “Confirm conversions of the file format when opening it”. Finally, click “OK”.
From now on, you will be able to open damaged files if you select the “Recover text from any file” option. This option is available in the “File Types” section.
With these tips you’ll never lose your work again if your computer suddenly restarts or if you forgot to save your work before closing Word.
