MICROSOFT WORD

RECOVER YOUR LOST DOCUMENT

Imagine this, you type up your favourite recipe or have just started writing your novel in Microsoft Word. You’ve put in a few hours of work and have forgotten to save since you’ve been so enthralled in your typing (it happens to the best of us!) when suddenly your computer turns off!

It could your computer has run out of power, or is restarting for an update but the end result is your precious work wasn’t saved and now it’s gone. Well, not gone completely. There’s still a chance you could recover it.

Newer versions of Microsoft Word periodically saves your work for you on a temporary basis. This doesn’t mean you don’t have to save. It just means that if something goes wrong, then Word may be able to recover some (if not all) of your lost work!

You’re computer has just restarted and you need to recover your unsaved work. To start:

• Open Microsoft Word and start a new document

Now depending on how recent this restart was you may get a prompt on the left hand side of the screen about recovering lost documents. All you need to do is click on a document and it’ll open up!

If however this prompt doesn’t come up then don’t fret, we can check to see if your work is recoverable.

• Click on File in the top left corner
• Then click on the Open option on the left hand side

You should now be at a screen similar to the one below.

• Now click on “Recover Unsaved Documents” at the bottom of the screen (highlighted in red).

This will open up the temporary save files Word has stored. Fingers crossed your work is in that folder!

If there are multiple files in the folder and you’re not sure which is which, simply open them one by one to check. Opening the files won’t make them go away.

If unfortunately your work isn’t in there then it’s most likely gone unfortunately. This just outlines the importance of saving your work! A simple keyboard shortcut CTRL + S (for windows) or CMD + S (for Macs) will save your work. A second spent saving your work is a second spent saving you hours of having to re-type if something goes wrong!