How to Restore an Unsaved Word Document

If your computer crashes, you may be able to recover your documents.

If your computer crashed or shut down unexpectedly while you were using Microsoft Word and before you had a chance to save your document, you might not be completely out of luck. Word offers an AutoRecover feature that will probably allow you to recover most, if not all, of your unsaved Word document. This feature only works with unexpected shutdowns of the program, however, so save your document regularly while working on it, as this feature will be unable to help if you manually closed Word without remembering to save.

Instructions

1. Open Microsoft Word.

2. Locate a panel titled "Document Recovery" on the left side of the Microsoft Word window. This panel will include a list of "Available files" including title and the time and date the version was most recently automatically saved.

3. Click on the document you wish to recover. It will open in a new Word window.

4. Save the document.

5. Repeat Steps 2 to 4 for each document you wish to save.

6. Click the "Close" button in the bottom right corner of the "Document Recovery" panel when you have recovered and saved all the documents you want.

References

• Microsoft Support: How Word creates and recovers the AutoRecover files

Resources

• Microsoft Support: Home