How to Recover a lost Microsoft Office document

If you use Microsoft Word, chances are you are well-versed in hitting the Save icon every few minute's. However, no matter how disciplined you are, there's forever the chance of losing work. Whether the culprit is a power outage, software crash, or just plain absent-mindedness, keep calm. How to Recover a lost Microsoft Office document.

Word 2007 and 2010
If you're using an older model of Microsoft Word, you can use the program to search for backups of your lost document.

1. To start, open Word and click on the File tab (if using Word 2010), or the Office Start Button (if using Word 2007).

2. From here, select "Open." This will open a Windows Explorer window. Select the location where you last saved the document in question. For most humans, that area is going to be "My Documents."

3. Next to the "File Name" text box, you'll see a drop-down list of file types. By default, "All Word Documents" is selected. Instead, choose "All file types." Backup file's have the name "Backup of (name of document)."

4. Locate the one that fits the bill, open it and save it properly.


How to Restore Microsoft Office Files

Here's how to re-store lost files in Microsoft Office:

1. Open Word, Excel or PowerPoint to a blank document and click File.

2. Click Info on the left rail.

3. Click Manage Document.

In Excel and Powerpoint, "Workbook" and "Presentation" are used instead of "Document" in this step or the next step.

4. Click "Recover Unsaved Documents."

5. Select a file and click Open. If your File is not listed, continue to step 6.

6. If your File wasn't on the list, try searching in the folder C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel (or Word or PowerPoint). You may see a file there with the right file name and a dash after it, followed via a long string of numbers (ex: quarterly report-04121200630512349068373463). Open that File.

Your document will re-appear.