How to Recover Deleted Temporary Files in Word

1. Open the Recycle Bin on your desktop to see if the temporary Word document was moved to the trash. Click 'View,' and then arrange deleted files by the date deleted. If the document is in the trash, right click it. Click 'Restore' to move it back to its original location.
2. Check to see if you have a backup copy automatically saved. To find out if you have auto-backup settings enabled, open Microsoft Options and click 'Word Options,' and then 'Advanced.' Under the section titled 'Save,' check to see if you have enabled the 'Always create a backup' feature. If so, open the search feature from the start menu again. In the search box, type '.wbk' and click 'search.' If you find the document, open it from the 'Open' feature in Microsoft Word.
3. Open Microsoft Word. If you lost a document due to a power shutdown or a crash, Word may have performed an automatic recovery. When you open Microsoft Word, a task pane will open on the left-hand side of the screen if one or more documents are recovered. Select the files you want restored, and Word will automatically repair them.
4. Manually look for an automatic repair by opening the 'Search' feature from the start menu. In the search box, type '.asd,' and click 'search.' If you find your document save as an 'asd' file, open Microsoft Word, and click the 'Open' menu. Select your file that ends in '.asd.' Open the file, and then immediately restart the computer. Once the computer has restarted, Word may find automatically recover the file in the recovery task pane. If so, double click the file and save it as a '.docx' or '.doc' file.
5. If Word still doesn't find the file, conduct another search from the start menu. In the search box, type '.tmp.' Two chevrons will appear that ask when the document was modified. Under 'Specify dates,' insert the dates on which you last modified the document. Click 'Search.' Go to the View menu, and click 'Details.' Arrange the icons by the modification dates. If you still don't find the document, repeat the above steps, except this time, type '~*.*' in the search box. If you find your document using either of these options, use the Microsoft Word troubleshooter to troubleshoot damaged documents and recover the files.