Recover Deleted or Lost Excel, Word, Powerpoint Documents

Did you just realize that your Word document has disappeared from your computer? Or did you mistakenly delete an important Excel file that you spent a week working on? Calm! Nothing is lost. You can recover deleted documents by following the guide below.

Create a document (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, PDF or whatever) is always hard work and takes a long time if done well. Unfortunately, one click too many is enough to delete the document and with it all the work done. This is definitely not a good thing, therefore, it is important to back up important documents on a regular basis, otherwise your work could disappear overnight. However, even in the event of accidental deletion, the documents may still be somewhere on your computer until they are overwritten by new files. Before that overwriting happens you can perform a restore and recovery of office documents, PDFs, emails, archives, and more.

#1. Recover Deleted Documents from PC/Mac with Recoverit

What you need is a data recovery tool like Recoverit. It is 100% safe software that fully supports the recovery of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, text, PDF, archive, email, HTML, etc… documents as well as videos, photos and audio files. Download the free demo version to understand if the documents are still in memory. The download links are below, click to proceed:

Document loss scenarios and which Data Recovery supports for recovery:

• » Accidental deletion with the “Shift + Del” keys or emptying the Recycle Bin
• »Formatting the disk or partitions
• »Cancellation following power failure
• »Virus infection
• » Reinstall Windows system or hard drive crash
• » Invalid partition table

How to Recover Lost or Deleted Excel, Word, PowerPoint Documents

Step 1. Run the program on your computer and launch the data recovery wizard. Select the type of data you want to recover (in our case select “OTHER”) and the disk to scan, for example a partition or the entire hard disk. It can also be a removable external device such as a USB stick, external hard drive, digital camera, camcorder, iPod, mobile phone, etc…

Step 2. When the scanning job finishes you will be able to preview and check whether the desired documents were found.

Step 3. The last step is to select i documents to recover. Search for documents thanks to the search function integrated into the program or browse through the various folders or by dividing the recoverable files by type and format. Once found, select them and click on the bottom right Recover to proceed with the rescue. A very important tip: Do not save the recovered documents in the same location (partition) from which you are scanning. This is important to prevent lost files from being overwritten.

If the documents you lost were not deleted but simply not saved, you need not despair. Even in this scenario there is the possibility of recovering Word, Excel, Powerpoint documents. Here are the steps to follow recover the unsaved document in Microsoft Office Excel, Word, or PowerPoint if you close it inadvertently before saving him.

1. Open the application Office that you were using.
2. Click on the tab File.
3. Click Recent.
4. Scroll to the end of the “Recent documents” (in some Office versions), then click “Recover unsaved documents” if you are in Word, “Recover unsaved workbooks” if you are in Excel or “Recover unsaved presentations” if you are in Powerpoint.

The saved drafts folder will open in a new window. Select the file and then click You open. In the bar at the top of the file, click Save with name to save the file on your computer.

You can also access these files by following these steps:

1. Open the Office application you were using.
2. Open a new file or any existing file.
3. Click on the tab File.
4. click on Information.
5. click on Manage versions.
6. click on Recover unsaved documents if you use Word, Recover unsaved workbooks if you use Excel or Recover unsaved presentations if you use PowerPoint.

You will see the list of your unsaved files. Select the file and click You open. In the business bar at the top of the file, click Save As to save the file to your computer.

If the above method doesn’t help you recover your documents, you can also navigate to one of the following locations to open the file, depending on your operating system (NOTE: These file locations cannot be changed):

Windows 7/8 and 10 – C:\Users\User_Name\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office\UnsavedFiles (you should be able to see your hidden files here)

#3. Turn on Auto Save Office Documents

Here’s how to enable autosave and autosave to protect your files in Microsoft Office and avoid losing them for not saving them beforehand:

1. Click on the tab File.
2. In Help, click Options.
3. click on Save.
4. Make sure the “Saves autosave information every x minutes” is selected. In Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, make sure the “Keep the last version saved automatically if I close without saving” is selected.