I lost my word program

Applied to: Microsoft Office Word 2020, 2019, 2016, 2013, 2010, 2007, and 2003

Closing the Word accidentally or a program/system crash may cause the unsaved Word document to disappear. Luckily, there is still a chance to recover unsaved Word documents in Windows 10/11 from Temporary Files, AutoRecover, or Word Document Recovery.

Besides, if your saved Word document gets deleted, you can restore deleted Word documents from the Recycle Bin or by using one of the best data recovery software. 

Have you accidentally closed your Word application without saving the document you had been working for a few hours? Have you lost the Word file unsaved due to a sudden program crash? Or mistakenly deleted some saved and essential Word document? If you are looking for an effective solution, you’ve come to the right place.

In this article, we will show you the most useful ways to recover unsaved Word documents. Furthermore, we also introduce you to a renowned office file recovery tool — EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard to help you restore deleted or permanently deleted Word documents in a few clicks. It is also competent to repair corrupted DOCX/DOC files as well as other documents.

Solution 1. Recover Unsaved Word Document from Temporary Files

Unsaved Word documents vanishing is a very unpleasant problem. Take it easy. There are three possible ways to find a Word document that is not saved. The following operations use Word 2016 edition as an example. The steps for Word 2013-2019 are similar.

Recovering unsaved Word documents requires you to turn on AutoSave in advance. If this feature is turned on, you can find the unsaved files through the following path:

C:UsersOwnerAppDataLocalMicrosoftOfficeUnsavedFiles

Or you can follow the steps given below to do it.

Step 1. In MS Word, click the «File» tab in the upper left.

Step 2. Click «Manage Document» and select «Recover Unsaved Documents» from the drop-down list.

Step 3. Check for your missing File in the dialog box. If it was a recent loss, it should appear.

Step 4. Open the recovered Word document and click the «Save As» button in the top banner.

Additional Help — How to Turn on AutoRecover

Many of us have experienced a situation where we have created a Word document and then accidentally closed it out without saving it. To avoid this kind of situation, you’d better enable AutoRecove.

Step 1. Open Word, go to «File» > «Options» > «Save».

Step 2. Tick the box of «Save AutoRecover information every * minutes» and «Keep the last autosaved version if I close without saving».

Step 3. Click «OK» to save the changes.

Excel, like Word, is an indispensable office software. If you lose an unsaved Excel document, you can use the methods we recommend to retrieve it.

Solution 2. How to Recover Unsaved Word Document from AutoRecover

Another way to get back an unsaved Word document is by using AutoRecover. AutoRecover file names end in the .asd file name extension. By default, Word searches for AutoRecover files every time that it starts, and then it displays any data found in the Document Recovery task pane. If the Document Recovery pane does not open, manually search for auto-recovered files. To do this, use one of the following procedures according to your Word version:

For Word 2010 — 2019:

Step 1. Open the Word program, and click «File» > «Options». In the left navigation pane, click «Save». Copy the AutoRecover file location path and paste it into File Explorer.

Tip: You can change the time of AutoSave interval in «Save AutoRecover information every xx minutes» and click OK.

Step 2. Go to the File Explorer, find the unsaved document, and copy the .asd file.

Step 3. Go to your Word app, click «File» > «Open» > «Recover Unsaved Documents» at the bottom.

Step 4. Paste the copied .asd file into the File Name box popping up. Open the Word file recover it.

If Word warns that «Word experienced an error…», repeat the steps and click «Open and Repair» at the open Unsaved Document window.

For Word 2002 — 2007:

Then, you can check the file content and save it as a new Word file at another secure location.

Solution 3. How to Restore Unsaved Word with Document Recovery

If your Word crashes or closes abruptly, it will automatically restore unsaved Word documents in most cases when it comes back online. You can find the unsaved Word documents on the left panel, under Document Recovery. 

Solution 4. How to Recover Word Document from Recycle Bin

If you deleted a Word document without emptying the Recycle Bin, you could undelete the Word document with simple clicks.

Step 1. Go to the Recycle Bin. Check if the deleted word file is still there. If you don’t know the name, look for file types such as DOC, DOCX, DOT, etc.

Step 2. Select the Word file and click «Restore» to recover it.

If you have emptied the recycle bin after deleting files, the deleted Word file may have been permanently removed. If you are in the same case, follow the next solution to restore deleted Word documents with a data recovery program.

Solution 5. How to Recover a Word Document with Word File Recovery Software

If you have lost saved Word documents because of careless deletion, hard drive formatting, or system errors, the above ways won’t work. At this time, you have to resort to a professional hard drive recovery software — EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard.

With this capable tool, you can recover deleted files in Windows 11/10/8/7 in various formats, including documents, videos, audio files, emails, ZIP, and more.

Note: This solution can be only used to recover deleted or lost Word documents that were saved on your computer before. 

Step 1. Choose the Word file location

Choose the drive or a specific folder and click the «Scan» button.

Step 2. Locate your Word files

The software will start immediately scanning all lost data on the selected drive. After the scan, click the «Documents» option in the left panel. Choose «Word» from the category bar. Then, click «Preview».

Step 3. Recover Word files

After previewing the lost Word files, select the desired Word files and click «Recover». Then, select a folder to store the Word files.

How to Recover Unsaved Word Document on Mac in 2 Ways

On Mac, AutoRecover is turned on by default. Take the two methods below to recover unsaved Word on Mac by using the AutoRecover function.

Solution 1. Restore Unsaved Word Document in Finder

Step 1. Start your Mac and open the Finder window.

Step 2. Search for AutoRecovery in the search bar. A list of files Word documents named «AutoRecovery save of» will appear. 

Step 3. Find and open the Word document you want to recover. 

Step 4. Click the «File» menu and choose «Save As». Rename the restored files and click the Save button. 

Solution 2. Restore Unsaved Word Document with Terminal

The unsaved Word document can be recovered from the temporary folder by using Terminal.

Step 1. Open your Mac and go to «Applications» > «Utilities» > «Terminal».

Step 2. Type open $TMPDIR and find the TemporaryItems folder on the list. 

Step 3. Find the file you need. Open and save it to recover unsaved Word documents. 

Conclusion

In this tutorial, you can learn five ways to recover unsaved Word documents on Windows and Mac devices. With the help of EaseUS file recovery software, you can restore lost Word documents, whether they are deleted, encrypted by malware, or corrupted when it was saved on a faulty partition. 

Hope these solutions can help you get back any lost Word documents.

Recover Unsaved Word Document Frequently Asked Questions

If you still have some Word recovery problems, you can read the following questions and answers to get more help.

How do I recover an unsaved Word document Windows 10?

Step 1. Click the «File tab», then choose «Info», then select «Manage Documents».

Step 2. Select «Recover Unsaved Documents» from the drop-down menu.

Step 3. Click «Open» when you have selected the document you want to recover.

Step 4. Click the «Save As» button and save your Word document.

How to recover unsaved Word document from USB?

If you have unsaved changes to a Word document that is stored on a USB drive, you can recover your work in two ways:

One way is to try opening the document from the Recent Documents list in Microsoft Word. To do this, open Word and click on the File menu. Then, click on Open and select Recent Documents. If your unsaved document is listed, you should be able to open it and recover your work.

Another way to recover an unsaved Word document from a USB drive is to use the Autosave feature. To do this, open the document that you were working on and look for the Autosave folder. If you find the file, you can recover your work by opening it in Word.

How to recover unsaved Word document 2016?

Try these methods to restore unsaved Word document in Word 2019, 2016, 2013, or 2010:

• Check your recently opened documents
• Try opening a temporary file
• Use the AutoRecover tool

Where are unsaved Word documents stored?

These Word files can be found via «File> Open» and click the «Recover Unsaved Documents» button at the very bottom of the Recent File List.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply

ask a new question.

upgrades have been done and now i’ve lost my microsoft word programs that were installed, how to get them back

Don’t worry if you don’t know how to recover unsaved Word document? This post will show you two wonderful solutions to work things out after losing a Word document due to accidental deletion, formatting, program crash, or unknown reasons. One is recovering lost Word document through Microsoft Word and the other is using MiniTool Power Data Recovery.

People are used to saving personal information, business data and study materials in Word documents, Excel files and PowerPoint files mainly because of its convenience. It is possible to lose the Word document due to different reasons no matter where it is stored (in the internal hard drive, external hard drive, USB flash drive, or other places).

• The document is deleted accidentally
• The document is lost due to system crash or Microsoft Word crash
• Other reasons

How To Retrieve Deleted Files On PC — Step By Step Tutorial.

You’re lucky if you do have back of the lost/unsaved Word document. But, in most cases, users don’t have the latest backup for the Word document. So they are wondering can I retrieve a Word document that wasn’t saved.

How to recover unsaved Word document at this time? In brief, you have two choices:

• Use MiniTool Power Data Recovery to recover lost Word document.
• Recover previous version of Word document through Microsoft Word.

In fact, unexpected file loss is a common problem that lots of people are facing with or have ever met. Most of them struggle to know how do I recover an unsaved Word document on my computer, instead of recreating a new document with almost the same content.

In this part, you’ll learn how to recover an unsaved Word document with MiniTool Power Data Recovery in different platforms.

Learn Practical Ways To Recover Missing Files On Windows 10.

How Do I Recover an Unsaved Word Document

How do I recover an unsaved Word document in Windows 10 or other Windows systems? There are mainly three steps to complete.

How do I recover a permanently deleted Word document?

Step 1: get & install MiniTool Power Data Recovery to your computer. Then, launch it to see the main interface. Now, you are supposed to choose one from the four function options displayed in the left-hand panel.

Free Download

Tips on choosing a suitable one for your case:

1. If the deleted/lost Word document was saved on a local partition, please select Logical Drives.
2. If your document is included in a USB flash drive/SD card, please connect the device to your computer and choose Devices. (How to fix when USB flash drive not recognized or external hard drive not showing up)
3. If you want to recover corrupt Word files from an inaccessible hard disk, you should also choose Devices and select your hard disk.

Step 2: select the target partition/disk to scan and click on the Scan button in the lower right corner.

If you want to search for only Word files, please do the following things:

1. Click on the Scan Settings icon on the left side.
2. Check only Office WORD Document (*.doc) and Office2007 Word Document (*.docx) under Extra search for known file types.
3. Click on the OK button to confirm changes.
4. Click on the Scan button to start detecting Word documents.

Step 3: check all the Word documents you want to recover from the scan result. Then, you should click on the Save button to choose a storage path for them. At last, click on the OK button to confirm and wait for the recovery to complete.

That’s how to recover the documents you have deleted or the corrupt files on Windows platform. If you have deleted a Word document from USB and want to recover it, please connect the USB device to your computer before running the Power Data Recovery software.

What if you have lost files on a Windows Server system? Please read this page:

How to Recover Unsaved Word Document Mac

To recover lost Word document on your Mac, you should use Stellar Data Recovery for Mac.

The recovery steps are:

1. Get & install the software properly.
2. Launch it to start Mac Word files recovery. Please select Documents; toggle the switch to On.
3. Select the partition/disk that contains the unsaved Word document and click on the Scan button to search for lost Word documents.
4. Wait for the scan and check all the Word documents you want to recover from Mac. Click on the Recover button to set a safe location for storing recovered Word documents. Then, click Save and wait for the recovery to finish.

That’s how to recover a Word document on Mac. To know more about Mac file recovery, please read:

Click to Tweet

Recover Unsaved Word Document with AutoSave Feature

Definitely, there is an AutoSave function built-in Microsoft Word that can be used to help you recover Word document easily from the automatically saved versions or unsaved files. If you’d like to learn the way to recover lost Word document by using the built-in AutoSave feature in different cases, just keep reading.

How to Recover a Word Document That Was Saved Over

You should recover previous version of Word document when you need a Word document that was saved over. The recovery steps are:

1. Keep the certain Word document opening.
2. Click on the File button located in the upper left corner of the pane.
3. The file window will appear and the Info option will be chosen by default.
4. Three sections are provided under Info: Permissions, Prepare for Sharing and Versions. All the versions saved automatically will be shown to you here according to the saving time.
5. Look at the save time of them and figure out which is the version you want.
6. Click on a version and Microsoft Word will open a new Word window for you.
7. In the new window, two options are available: Compare and Restore.
8. Click on the Restore button to overwrite the last saved version with the version you choose.

How Do You Recover a File You Didn’t Save

The situation seems to get worse if you have made many changes to a document, then you close it without saving any changes. When you open the Word document again, you won’t be able to see any automatically saved versions in the Info window after clicking the File menu. How can you recover the unsaved document under such circumstances?

Well, you can rely on the Recover Unsaved Documents feature or open the AutoRecover file location to check.

Where is the Recover Unsaved Documents feature?

1. Open the Word document on your computer.
2. Click on the File menu in the upper left corner.
3. Find Manage Document option under Info.
4. Click on Manage Document and choose Recover Unsaved Documents.
5. Browse the recent unsaved files.
6. Select a file to open.
7. Click on the Save As button at the top of the file to save the changes.

How to open asd file?

You can also open the AutoRecover file location and check whether your need documents are contained here. Generally, the AutoSaved Word document files will be stored in the computer with a name formed by the original file name, Unsaved tag and some special symbols & numbers (please see the picture below). The AutoRecover files are saved as asd files and they are read-only.

Where are AutoRecover files saved?

You can find the location of AutoRecover files by the following steps:

1. Click on the File option in the menu bar.
2. Choose Options from the left-hand pane of the window.
3. Select Save in the Word Options window you see.
4. Navigate to the Save documents section on the right-hand pane.
5. Find the AutoRecover file location and look at the storage path after it. The default path is: C:UsersUsernameAppDataRoamingMicrosoftWord and you can change it according to needs.

When you finally find your needed document in that location, please double click to open the asd file in Microsoft Office Word. Also, two choices are available: Compare and Restore. If it is the one you need, please select Restore to recover the unsaved Word document.

Now, you know exactly where Word saves AutoRecover files.

How do I turn on AutoRecover in Word?

Actually, the AutoRecover feature will be enabled by default. The Save AutoRecover information every _ minutes and Keep the last autosaved version if I close without saving options under Save documents section are both checked by default. You can uncheck these two options as you need.

Can I change the time interval of AutoRecover?

In fact, the time interval is set to 10 minutes by default and you can change it to an integer ranging from 1 to 120.

• The timer will be initialized every time when the new modification has been made to the Word document after the completion of the last auto-save/manual saving. And when the specified time interval is reached, a new version of the current Word document will be generated.
• If you would like to save current changes manually by pressing the Save button, the timer will be cleared and stop working until new changes have been made to the document.

How Can You Recover an Unsaved Word Document after Crash

Sometimes, you may suffer from a sudden Microsoft Office Word app crash or a system crash while you’re working on a Word document. What’s the right thing to do at this time? Definitely, you should do the following things to recover unsaved Word document after the crash:

1. Restart the Microsoft Office Word or the restart the computer.
2. Go to the original place to find and open the correct Word document.
3. Take a look at the Document Recovery section located in the left-hand pane of Word.
4. There may be many files that Word has recovered for you and they are available in the list; you should make sure which one you need.
5. Right click on the file and choose Save As.
6. Choose a location for it and click on the Save button.

Please note:

• If you see many files in the list and you don’t know which one to save, you may look at the date and creation time under the name of each file (that may give a clue).
• If you see multiple versions of the same file, it’s better for you to choose the one with the most recent time since it often contains the most recent changes.
• To see the detailed content and changes, you can click on a file to open the document directly. You can continue working with the file you choose or save it first.
• Please close the Document Recovery pane when you are sure you have recovered all the documents you need.

All in all, if you find your Word document with very important information stored in is missing, you should react immediately by following the suggestions gave in the previous content to recover Unsaved Word document all by yourself.

Click to Tweet

The steps to recover unsaved excel file and the process to recover unsaved PowerPoint are basically the same. You can also watch the following demonstration video guide. If you would like to recover a pdf file, please click here.

Bottom Line

Word document missing seems to be inevitable and non-ignorable. Almost all users have ever been stuck in Word document loss issues. What a pity!

But the loss of an important Word document is actually not the end of the world; on the contrary, you can recover the unsaved/deleted/lost Word document in different ways.

For instance, both MiniTool Power Data Recovery software and the built-in AutoSave function can be used to help you find back the lost Word document information. They can be useful in most of the case.

What you should do is choosing the proper method according to your actual situation to complete the Word document recovery work at once.

Recommendations:

• Download Microsoft Template for Word. Excel, PowerPoint, and more.
• Create a template for Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint

Recover Unsaved Word Document FAQ

How to get corrupted doc files back? A corrupted Microsoft Office file, be it Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Access, or Infopath is when you attempt to open the document and it contains garbage characters. Some well known errors such as, “Word cannot open the document.” or “Word cannot recognize the document format.” is a pain in the ass, all that effort when down the drain, things are made worthless if you find yourself without a secondary backup file. Fear not, recovering lost word documents and repairing damaged docx files has never been easier. Here are 4 amazing free tools that recover, repair and restore corrupt Microsoft Office Word doc and docx.

🤣😍😂 5 Free Open Source Alternative To Microsoft Office Suite

Perhaps it is time to move to the cloud, why pay for productivity suites when there are so many free alternatives such as Google Docs and OpenOffice? Not to mention the chances of having your files deleted or corrupted is non-existent. Time to move to the cloud.

Microsoft Word automatically uses the Open and Repair feature if Word detects a problem with a document when you open it. However, you can force Word to use the Open and Repair feature when you open any document. This may be especially useful when you intend to save the document in a different file format.

If you save a damaged document in a different file format, you may not be able to open the saved document. For more information about how to troubleshoot damaged Word documents, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

↓ 02 – S2 Recovery Tools for Microsoft Word

Microsoft recommends methods for recovering corrupt Word files that won’t open. This software provides buttons to easily invoke these as well as providing 5 independent methods for recovering and opening corrupt Microsoft Word DOC & DOCX files. Additionally the program provides links to two pieces of freeware not coded by the author, a free service (if you can wait 14 days!) and a featured commercial solution (which is an affiliate of the author’s).

Also it has its own native previous file version recovery tool which works in any version of Windows, Vista-Windows 10 if System Protection has been turned on in the System App of the Control Panel and a Restore Point made. Another feature is a GUI interface for finding temporary, deleted and lost versions of corrupt files. Future plans are to implement Microsoft’s instructions for recovering corrupt Word files that will open. This program was formerly known as Word Recovery and more recently S2 Services Word Recovery. Works great on Microsoft Windows 10.

↓ 03 – Repair My Word

Repair My Word is a data recovery program for Microsoft Word documents. It is designed to recover text from damaged or corrupt Word files (.doc files) that will not open normally. The recovered text can then be saved as an error free Microsoft Word document. Repair My Word will allow you to obtain access to the contents of corrupt word documents.

It will repair Microsoft Word 6.0, Word 95, 97, 2000, XP, and 2003 for Windows. Repairing My Word is simple to use. Just open the corrupt Word file, preview the recoverable text in the preview window and save this text to a new error free Word file. This program does NOT work for Office 2007 .docx files. Some common error messages which can prevent a user opening a Microsoft Word document include:

• “The document name or path is not valid. Try these suggestions. Check the file permissions for the document or drive. Use the File Open dialog box to locate the document.”
• “Word cannot open the document.”
• “Word cannot open the document: user does not have access privileges.”
• When you attempt to open a Microsoft Word 97 document into Microsoft Word version 6.x or 7.x, the document contains garbage characters.

↓ 04 – Savvy DOCX Recovery

XML was designed from the beginning to be intolerant of errors. This decision adversely affects MS Word’s corruption recovery. With one error in the document.xml subfile where all the DOCX file’s text is stored, instead of a partial recovery, Word will stop and throw an error.

Savvy DOCX Recovery attempts to do precise surgery on corrupt Word documents to reorder or excise bad XML tags. If this doesn’t work, it uses the command line app xmllint first to attempt to repair corrupt XML subfiles of the DOCX. If this doesn’t work a second attempt is made where the corrupt XML subfiles are truncated at the first error, and the correct ending tags are again added with xmllint.

Recover Microsoft Office Files from Temporary File

Another method is to locate the temporary file of the original file, usually the file hidden and stored in the same folder as the original. Enable ‘view all files’ in the “tools” -> “Folder Options” -> “View”. Enable View hidden files and locate the hidden Microsoft Office file. 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. Copy the file to a designated folder and rename the file extension from .tmp to .doc

• 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