Recovering Files the Microsoft Office Way

There have always been moments when you’ve spent time working on an important project using Microsoft Office. Whether you’re a student, office worker, or freelance writer, using the program is necessary in creating the perfect Word document or PowerPoint presentation. Like all forms of electronic work, the tasks you do on our computer hold the risk of being erased or lost at the moment of power failures and program crashes. But what if it’s possible to somehow recover your precious files? Below are some of the methods and ways you can find your files that weren’t manually saved before a program crash happens.

The first method of finding an unsaved Microsoft Office document is to try searching for it in your computer’s built-in search feature. This can be found by going to Finder if you’re using a Mac or the Start button on Windows. Type the file name or a portion of the document’s contents in the box to see if your computer is able to find traces of it saved in the database. If you happen to find the file, you’re in luck and by opening it you will be able to see the latest auto-saved version of your Office document, together with a prompt asking you to save your file.

Later versions of Microsoft, such as Office 2010, have a feature that can help find unsaved projects. By opening the Microsoft Office program itself, you can find a list of recent, unsaved documents by clicking on the Recent tab under File. You’ll find the Recover Unsaved Documents option, which will open up a folder containing all Saved Drafts. From here, you can look for your file.

In most cases wherein you change text or other elements of an Office document, an autosave feature will kick in. This saves any recent changes as long as your document has a previous saved version in the database. Bearing this in mind, it’s best to save any Office files you are currently working on to increase the chances of having them autosaved as opposed to documents with no prior saved data.

With Microsoft Office, there is an option to autosave your files at certain time intervals. You can set this at the Preferences tab where there is a tick box for you to indicate how long autosave will take between time intervals. While this feature is definitely helpful, it implies that any changes made before the autosave’s set time will not be recorded. For example, changing anything in Outlook before the 10-minute time interval that you’ve set will not be saved by the program unless you do so manually. Just be sure to select the tick box for this feature to ensure that it’s on and effective while you work.

If you are attempting to recover or open a corrupt Office document, there are few options to take. Due to the nature of corrupt files, it will be slightly more difficult to recover them as opposed to files that were saved normally. Some cases with files that can’t be opened are due to them somehow being blocked from being read. To change this, go to your file’s Properties where you can click the Unblock button and get it to open again.

Another method is to try out the Repair option that shows up next to Open when attempting to open the file normally. Microsoft Office will attempt to solve issues existing within the file and in doing so, be able to recover your document’s data.

Microsoft Office’s recovery features are certainly useful for anyone who has had a bad stroke of luck in saving their documents in projects. Aside from the typical autosave and autorecovery features, there are plenty of other ways to get back those files you’ve worked hard in creating.