a woman using a laptop computer on top of a desk

It’s happened to all of us. You’ve been typing away at the keyboard. You are interrupted — maybe the phone or doorbell rings. You close the document. And you don’t save it. Our computer tip of the day is all about how to recover unsaved word documents.

It doesn’t have to be a phone or doorbell. It could be a lightning or thunder that suddenly shuts off the computer. It could be, let’s face it, just a moment of inattentiveness. You shut down your file, but either think you’ve saved it or hit the wrong key.

How to Recover Unsaved Word Documents

This can make you want to scream, whether it’s compiling your tax deductions or working on a recipe.

Well, don’t scream. There are several different methods to recovering unsaved word documents. And they are the computer tip of the day!

First, don’t panic.

Then, go to the top left corner of your ribbon and click on “File.” Scroll all the way to the bottom and you will see, in the middle of the page, the wonderful words “Recover Unsaved Documents” next to a small file icon.

Click on it, and voila! You will be taken to a folder called “Unsaved Files.” You document will be there, usually named the first several words of the document.

What do you do if “Recover Unsaved Documents” doesn’t appear? Well, don’t panic then, either.

You can get to the “Unsaved Files” file by going to the following directory on your computer: C drive/Users/[whatever you are individually called as user — I’m “R” because my name begins with R]/Appdata/Local/Microsoft/Office/Unsaved Files.

There’s also a way to prevent losing a lot of unsaved material. It’s setting your computer to save often. Microsoft’s default is 10 minutes. We all know, though, that a lot can happen in 10 minutes. To set your system to save in a shorter time, click on File again. Then go to Options. A number of categories will open. Go to Save and click on it. Use the pulldown menu to set the number of minutes to elapse before it saves.

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