How to Recover a Word File That Was Closed Before Saving

Word’s AutoRecover
1. Open Microsoft Word from the “Start” menu of your computer if the program or the computer shut down while you were working in Word. Word often re-launches automatically after an unexpected shutdown such as this, but, even if it doesn’t, when you reopen the program, any recovered files appear in a recovery pane on the left-hand side of the screen.
2. Click on the file that you want to recover in the left recovery pane and the last saved version of the file comes up. If the last saved version was AutoRecover and not saved by you, the next time you try to save the file, you are prompted to enter a new name for the file.
3. Enter a file name if you would like to save the recovered file under a new name. Navigate to the original file location, click on the file name and press the “Save” button to save over the original version of the file if you are certain that the auto-recovered version is the most recent version.
When AutoRecover Fails
4. Search for the original Word file on the computer’s hard drive if the file does not appear in the recovery panel in Word. To search, go to the “Start” menu and type the file name directly in the search box in Vista or Windows 7 and press “Enter,” or select the “Search” and “For Files or Folders” options in XP, type in the file name and press “Enter.” If the file comes up, double-click the file name to open it and see if any of your changes saved.
5. Try to locate the auto-recovered Word files manually. Click the Office button in the upper left corner of the screen and choose “Word Options.” Switch to “Save” in the left pane and note the path listed in the “AutoRecover file location” box. Navigate to that folder on the hard drive. Type “.asd” into the search box to search for AutoRecover files.
6. Look through the temporary files that are stored on the computer. Open the system’s search feature again from the “Start” menu or use the search box directly in the menu. Type “*.TMP” into the box and press “Enter.” The Word file may have stored as a temporary file.