Just as we were making an important document with Excel, with Word or with PowerPoint, the current went out, leaving us petrified on the spot! Most likely we did not even have time to save and we fear that we have lost a good part of the work done up to now. Fortunately, Microsoft has thought of every eventuality, giving the user the possibility to recover an unsaved Excel, Word and PowerPoint file using the tools made available by the Office programs, in the event of a blackout, a program error or a crash or crash. sudden on the PC. In case of failure, we must not despair: we can try with some programs designed for the purpose, so as to try to recover the latest version of the file on which we were working.
READ ALSO: Recover damaged, corrupt or lost Word documents and Excel files
How to recover an unsaved Excel, Word and PowerPoint file
The methods we will show you below will allow you to recover all types of Office files using the automatic backup system present on Office 365 online accounts and the automatic save system integrated on all three main Office programs (Excel, Word and PowerPoint). At the end we will also show you a chapter with third-party programs that can recover corrupt or damaged Office files.Recovery with Office 365
If we use the subscription version of Office (called Office 365), the recovery of unsaved files is really very simple; first of all make sure to log in with our Microsoft account within the chosen Office program (by clicking on the top right on Login ), press CTRL + S to save the current document on our OneDrive space, then enable saving automatic by placing a check mark on the specific button at the top left.
From this moment on, all the documents that we are going to create will be synchronized in real time on our OneDrive account, so that they can be recovered quickly even without having to manually save each time.
If we suddenly lose our unsaved document (a blackout or a forced restart of Windows), open Word, Excel or PowerPoint, click on the Show recovered files item in the left sidebar and choose the OneDrive file with the latest version of the document saved . Once the document is open, we immediately press CTRL + S to save a local copy of the same, so as to end the recovery procedure.
We can find the same file to be recovered in the cloud space offered by OneDrive: all we have to do is open the link to the cloud page, log in with a Microsoft account and check in the Recent Items section.
Recovery with automatic saving
If we do not own Office 365 but a classic version of Office (the one in which we pay the license once and remains active forever), we can recover an unsaved Excel, Word and PowerPoint file using the automatic saving system offered on all programs Office; it creates a local copy of each document created at regular intervals, so that it can be restored quickly the next time it is accessed.In the event of a blackout or a sudden restart of Windows, all we have to do is reopen the Office program we were using and click on the Show recovered files item, present in the left sidebar.
A new toolbar will open on the left, where we can choose which automatic saving to restore.
To immediately save the recovered file, click on the arrowhead that appears on its right and select the Save as item; alternatively, just double-click on the file to restore it within the Office program in use, so you can make further changes and save a new copy of the file (always using the shortcut CTRL + S ).
If we want to make automatic saving more effective, we can reduce the waiting time before making the backup copy; to do this, click on the File menu at the top, select Options and finally go to the Save menu.
We activate the item Save auto-save information every and set the value as 1 minute, making sure that the item Keep the last version automatically restored if it is closed without saving is also active. This way Word, Excel or PowerPoint will save an automatic backup copy every minute, allowing us to always restore our documents.
Office document recovery programs
If even with the tools made available by Microsoft we have not recovered the precious documents (or the save file has become corrupted in the sudden shutdown), the only way to attempt recovery is by using specialized recovery programs.One of the most effective and easiest programs to use for the purpose is Recuva, available for free for Windows.
Once installed and started, simply select the Documents item in the screen for choosing the files to be recovered, so that you can start a complete scan of the disk in search of the traces left on the disk during the creation of the document. At the end of the scan we will have access to all the fragments and Office documents still recoverable, we will have to do is select the files or fragments that have a time and a date consistent with the creation of the document (which could appear with a random name or with an alphanumeric string) and finally click Retrieve at the bottom right.
A good alternative to Recuva is MiniTool Power Data Recovery Free, available for free for Windows. To use it, open the program (after downloading and installing it on our PC), click on Settings at the bottom and make sure to activate only the Document item, where all the main known document formats are present (including files created with the main programs Office).
Once this change has been made, click OK, select the system disk from those available and select the Scan button to start the scan. At the end of the scan we will see all the unsaved Excel, Word and PowerPoint, ready to be restored.
To try other recovery programs that are also compatible with Office documents, we invite you to read our guide on How to recover deleted files on your PC from hard disk or SSD .
Conclusions
If suddenly the power goes out or the PC shuts down or suddenly restarts while we were making a very important document, we must not panic, since the tools to recover an unsaved Excel, Word and PowerPoint file are really numerous and effective in most cases.If we wanted to recover Office documents from a PC with Windows locked at the start screen, we recommend you read our article on how to recover important files from frozen or broken Windows .
If instead the Office files are contained in a now damaged compressed archive, we can attempt recovery using one of the tools seen in our guide on how to Extract and Recover damaged or corrupt ZIP and RAR files .
