Click the Microsoft Office button, and then click Word Options. In the Navigation Pane, click Save. In the AutoRecover file location box, note the path, and then click Cancel. Open the folder that you noted in step 3. Look for files whose names end in.asd. Word 2003 and Word 2002. For Mac: In Word, go up and click the File menu item at the top of the screen > Preferences. From within this window, click Save. From here, make sure the “Save AutoRecover info” box is checked. The default number of minutes set in this box will be 10, so if you want to greatly increase your coverage in the case of a system failure, you can.
Microsoft Office has extensive AutoSave and Auto Recovery options that allow you to rescue your work in the event that it is lost due to a power failure, system crash or plain human error. However many people don't know how to use these features or that they even exist. Even if you don't have these features enabled, you can sometimes recover data from the various temporary files that are created by Office while you are working on the document.
Microsoft have changed the way AutoSave and Auto Recover works in different versions of Office. Therefore you may want to experiment before you rely on this information. Finding the Temporary Files When a new file is started a temporary file is created. This can be either in the windows temp directory, in 'C: Documents and Settings Application Data Microsoft'. If the file is stored on a network drive then it will be temporarily created there. This temporary file will have a few different letters after the tilde (or squiggly line ' ').
These are good ones to look for to find some lost info. There are others, but these are the ones most likely to contain data that can be recovered. Finding and using the temporary and auto save files The default auto save time for word documents is 10 minutes. You can control this time in Options under the 'Save' tab. The auto save files are placed in one of the following two locations, which is where you should look to recover the data. 'C: Documents and Settings Application Data Microsoft Word'. 'C: Documents and Settings Local Settings Temp' On Windows 7 and Vista, the locations will be.
'C: Users AppData Local Microsoft Word'. 'C: Users AppData Local Temp' If you are looking for files used by word, then the following file types should be looked for, where 'xxxx' is a number. A word document file will look like wrdxxxx.tmp.
A temp document file will look like wrfxxxx.tmp. An auto recovery file will look like wraxxxx.tmp. An auto recovery file that is complete will have the extension of.wbk.
When you have found a file that looks like it might contain data, you may want to open it in notepad instead of trying to get Word to reassemble it. The easiest way to do this is to open Notepad from the start menu then drag and drop the file in to it. The file will then be opened so that you can view the contents. If the document was open when the system failed (power failure or crash) then you could try just opening Word again (not the document, just Word itself from the start menu). Word will then try to recover the lost document. Office 2010 and Higher In Office 2010 and higher, you have an additional option, built in to the product, called Recover Unsaved Documents.
Click on File tab in the upper left corner. Choose Recent. In the bottom left corner is Recover Unsaved Documents The Saved Drafts folder will open. Find your file and double click on it to open.
Then save the file. These files can also be found in the following locations: Windows 8/Windows 7/Windows Vista C: Users AppData Local Microsoft Office UnsavedFiles Windows XP C: Documents and Settings Local Settings Application Data Microsoft Office UnsavedFiles Other Useful Information If you have been working on a file for hours and the document was created via copying and pasting or at one point had cut the entire page or document to paste some place and then placed something else on the clip board, the data may not have been lost. This is because when any info is copied it is sent to a temp file with the name wrlxxxx.tmp. Therefore you could search your system for files of this name and then use the same 'Drag and Drop' technique to view the data in Notepad to recover the data. Another interesting thing to note is that when a change is made to a document that requires a temp file to be created, when you press the save button all the temp files are merged together into one file and the file is renamed to what you called it. The original document that you created is then deleted. Further Information Microsoft Knowledge Base Description of how Word creates temporary files How to recover a lost file in Word 2007 or in Word 2003 How to recover a lost Word document Automatically save and recover Office 2007 files Automatically save and recover Office 2011 MAC files.
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I have an Office 365 subscription with a 5-device license and I have Office installed on 2 MacBook Pros. Even though I have the latest version of Word installed on both laptops, I'm unable to add AutoSave to the Quick Access Toolbar on one laptop (it doesn't even appear as an option), while AutoSave only works in with some docs on my other laptop, but not all of them.
I've spent hours trying to find a solution, but nothing. Has anyone else had this problem and have you found a solution?.Thread moved by moderator to a more appropriate forum - OfficeWordMacOffice 2016 for Mac. Hi Appio, To narrow down the issue, please provide the following information:. You mentioned, on one laptop you can’t add Autosave in QAT in Word, while on other laptop autosave show up in some documents. Could you please provide the screenshot of the Autosave option from the working laptop?.
Confirm the version and build of Word from both the laptops. To check, in Word, go to the Word menu and choose About Word, confirm the version and build. Repeat the same steps in another laptop. In other laptop you can see Autosave option in some documents. Can you confirm where these documents are stored, online location such as OneDrive or your local drive?. Did you try any steps to add Autosave option?
If so, please provide detailed steps. Thanks, Neha. Hi Neha, Thanks for the quick reply.
Here's a screenshot from the working laptop: The doc titled 'All Website Info.' Shows AutoSave in the QAT, but it's grayed out and I can't turn it on; whereas in the doc titled '00 Welcome call Notes', I'm able to turn it on or off.
The version on both laptops is 16.8 (171210) All of my documents are stored in OneDrive (online). I tried adding the AutoSave option on the non-working laptop by going to PREFERENCES RIBBON & TOOLBAR QUICK ACCESS TOOLBAR, and then adding AutoSave from the list of popular commands. When AutoSave didn't appear in the list of popular commands, I selected All Commands, but the option still wasn't there. I hope that's useful. Thanks again for looking into this!