Have you ever lost an Excel file because you accidentally closed it without saving? Or because your computer crashed? It’s really frustrating — but you don’t have to start over!

There are a few ways you can recover unsaved Excel files How to Recover Deleted Office FilesLost a crucial file and need to get it back? These tips will help you recover your Office documents in no time at all. Read More . You might not get the latest version with all of your most recent changes, but it’s a lot better than starting from scratch. Let’s take a look at those recovery methods to see how it’s done!

Save to a different location on your computer. If you want to save a file to a location on your computer other than the default folder, use Save as. On the File menu, click Save as, or press + Shift + S. If the dialog box does not show a folder or folders on your computer, click On My Mac. In order to check whether the option Save AutoRecover information every minutes is selected or not, follow the steps below: a. Start MS Office Word. B.Click on the MS Office button and then on Word options. Click on Save. Go to Save Documents section to check ‘Save AutoRecover information every minutes’.

Recovering Excel Files in Windows

There are three main methods of recovering unsaved and overwritten files from Excel. If you close an unsaved workbook, you might be able to get it back using Excel’s Recover Unsaved Workbooks function:

Recovering Unsaved Excel Workbooks

To see which unsaved workbooks are available, go to File > Open and select Recent:

At the bottom of the screen, you’ll see the Recover Unsaved Workbooks button:

Click that button, and you’ll see a list of unsaved files:

If you’re lucky, your file will be there, and you can just load it back up again. Make sure to save it right away!

Recovering Overwritten Excel Files From OneDrive

If you don’t currently save your Excel files to OneDrive, this might convince you to start. OneDrive keeps a version history that you can browse and restore from whenever you’d like. You can save them wherever you want, but the Documents folder seems like a logical place.

It’s easiest to complete this process through the OneDrive browser interface.

First, head to onedrive.live.com.

Click on the folder you saved your file in (in our case, that’s Documents).

Find the document you’re looking for, and right-click it:

Select Version history:

You’ll now see a list of versions that OneDrive has stored. You’ll even be able to preview each version:

Find the one you’re looking for, and select Restore to overwrite the current version of the document or Download to download a copy of that version.

Restore Previous Versions From File History

If you don’t use OneDrive, there’s still a chance that you’ll be able to recover your overwritten Excel documents. If you’ve enabled File History in Windows, you can use that to find old versions.

Don’t know about File History? Check out our guide to the backup system The Ultimate Windows 10 Data Backup GuideWe've summarized every backup, restore, recovery, and repair option we could find on Windows 10. Use our simple tips and never despair over lost data again! Read More and enable it today! You’ll be glad you did.

If you’ve enabled File History, just navigate to your file in Windows Explorer. Right-click the file and select Restore previous versions:

A new window will appear, and you’ll see any previous versions that you can restore. If you haven’t turned on File History and haven’t created a restore point, you won’t have any options:

Enochian chess set. If you’ve been backing up your data, though, you might be able to get you Excel document.

Recovering Excel Files in macOS

Recovering your unsaved or overwritten Excel files is a bit different on a Mac. You can use the same process to restore previous versions from OneDrive if you’ve been saving there. That’s the easiest way to go. If you aren’t using OneDrive, though, and you don’t have backed-up versions of your documents, you have one main option.

To start, open Finder and go to Macintosh HD:

If you don’t see Macintosh HD (or another name for your hard drive), go to Finder > Preferences and select Hard disks under Show these items in the sidebar:

On my Mac, I’ll go to Users > [your username] > Library > Application Support > Microsoft > Office > Office 2011 AutoRecovery:

If you can’t see the Library folder in your user folder, you’ll need to show hidden files. First, enter the following command into the terminal:

Then, Option + Right-click the Finder icon and select Relaunch.

You can use the terminal to make this process easier by typing the following command to open the proper folder:

Depending on your version of Office, you may need to go to a different folder. Excel 2016, for example, saves files in ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Excel/Data/Library/Preferences/AutoRecovery/. If you’re having trouble finding your AutoRecovery files, run a search for your version of Office to see where others have found theirs.

Once you find your files, just double-click to open them and make sure to save them immediately.

Going this route doesn’t leave you with many options; Excel only keeps these AutoRecovered documents for a limited amount of time, so it’s best to back up your system and files on a regular basis.

The Lesson: Save Often and Back Everything Up

While these methods for recovering deleted and overwritten Excel files will work, they’re not the best. They can be quite involved, and they won’t necessarily get you the version of the spreadsheet you were hoping for. The best thing you can do is to save often (autosaving will help How to Auto-Save Your Work in WindowsHow many times did you lose work because the file you were working on didn't auto-save? Never let that happen to you again. Read More ) and use a backup solution that supports file versioning.

That being said, these methods will help when you don’t have any other options.

How do you deal with unsaved and overwritten Excel files? Do you have any other advice that might help? Share your tips in the comments below!

Summary

When a Word document got lost without saving by clicking Don't Save without awareness, you may risk a file loss on Mac. You can follow solutions here and restore 'unsaved' lost Word files on Mac from the Temporary or AutoRecovery folder. And as for lost Word file recovery, professional Mac file recovery software - EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard can easily help.

This page presents two practical methods and one reliable Mac file recovery software that can help you bring unsaved or deleted, lost Word document on Mac with ease. If you happen to lose Word document on Mac, check out the exact fix and bring it back on your own.

Overview

Problem - Accidentally click Don't Save in MS Word 2016

'I accidentally clicked 'Don't Save' while closing a document in MS Word 2016 on my Macbook. It makes me lost several pages of work. Is it possible to get it back?'

'Can I recover a file after I accidentally click Don't Save in MS Word?'

Solution - The issue mentioned above has happened to more than one users. And the solutions are various.

If you are one of those people who want to know how to recover unsaved Word document on Mac, follow on and you will find several possible ways for lost Word file recovery by clicking 'Don't Save', deleting, etc.

Solutions

We collected two major solutions and a bonus trick here to help and find lost Word file on Mac. Follow on and restore your lost Mac Word file immediately.

Recover unsaved Word document from AutoRecovery files

MS Office automatically creates backup copies of the Word, Excel, PPT etc files that you're working automatically. And these files are saved every 10 or 5 minutes.

• If you click Save while closing the document, Word will record the file(s) with all the changes you have made. The next time when Word starts up, you'll be able to easily view and open it at the 'Recent' column.

• And if you accidentally click 'Don't Save' while closing a Word document, Word will not recover the file automatically. Office Word will take it as that you don't want to keep the file or save all the changes.

In this case, you can try to recover lost Word document without saving from AutoRcovery folder manually:

Step 1: Go to Finder, then click 'Go', then Go to Folder

Step 2: Type in the following: ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Word/Data/Library/Preferences/AutoRecovery and click 'Go'.

Step 3: Check the AutoRecovery Folder.

Step 4: If you find the saved file named as AutoRecovery***, marked with other extensions, open it with Word.

You'll be able to view your lost Word file, then save it on Mac Desktop.

Find lost Word file in TemporaryItems folder

Mac also has a feature that it contains a TemporaryItems folder which saves all temporary files of Word, Excel, PPT and other files. It may contain your lost Word document with a TMP format.

Step 1: Go to Applications> Utilities > Terminal.

Step 2: Once in Terminal, enter the following command and then press enter: open $TMPDIR.

Step 3: You have now opened your TMP folder, open the folder named TemporaryItems.

If you're lucky, your document should be there! Sometimes a temporary file of your lost Word doesn't show up in the TemporaryItem or AutoRecovery folder, a bonus tip is to use professional Mac data recovery software to scan and find them on your Mac hard drive.

If the above two solutions fail to find your lost Word file, you can go to Microsoft and find a cool answer of recovering unsaved Word document on Mac: https://support.office.com/en-us/.

Bonus Trick: Find temp files or recover lost/deleted Word with Mac data recovery software

If you lost Word documents or other items, files on your Mac computer due to deletion, emptying the Trash, formatting, etc, you can partially restore them from the Trash. But if the Trash doesn't contain the lost files, Mac data recovery software is the best choice.

Here, we'd like to recommend a try-before-buy tool - EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac which scans the Mac drive, finding missing temp files of Word 2016 and your lost data, and retrieves your lost Word documents, Office Excel files, music, photos, videos, etc.

You don't need to pay before it actually finding and you deciding to retrieve your lost Word or other files. Feel free to download the trial version and give it a try:

Step 1. Select the location where your important Word documents were lost and click Scan button.

Step 2. EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac will start immediately a quick scan as well as a deep scan on your selected disk volume. Meanwhile, the scanning results will be presented in the left pane.

Step 3. By Path and Type, you can quickly filter the Word files you've lost earlier. Select the target files and click Recover Now button to get them back at once.