File Recovery Tips: How to Recover Word Documents

Microsoft Office Word is a common tool that performs the task of composing, editing and printing of documents. It is widely accepted in business world as well as in schools and personal lives. 

People carry around hundreds, even thousands of pages around easily with Word in computer hard drives, external hard drive, USB flash drive, and so on. However convenient, these documents and files are not at all immune to damage. Accidental operations (deletion, formatting, etc.), virus attacks and hardware failures can all result in lost Word document. Without proper backups, the data stored in that lost document could be gone forever.

How to Recover a Word Document

At some point in life, you will lose a Word Document. Maybe you inadvertently clicked on No when Word was asking if you would like to save before exit; maybe it is an unexpected power outage or malicious virus infection deleting all your stored documents...In this article, we try to shed some light on the issue of how to recover a Word document.

AutoRecover/AutoSave Function in Microsoft Word

To avoid losing all your work when accidents happen, make sure AutoRecover/ AutoSave is turned on (They should be turned on by default). 

• In Word 2016, 2013, 2010, click File > Options > Save. Make sure the Save AutoRecover information every x minutes box is selected. Also, make sure the Keep the last autosaved version if I close without saving box is selected.

• In word 2007, click the Microsoft Office Button and select Word Options. Check the "Save AutoRecover information every x minutes" box.

Optionally, you can change the location where the program automatically saves a version of files you work on, and change the time interval between each Autosave.

The built-in AutoRecover/AutoSave function enables us to recover Word document easily from the automatically saved versions. If you didn’t save your most recent changes when a Word unexpectedly closed, the first and foremost solution should be implementing this function.

Normally, after an unexpected closure, the Document Recovery task pane will automatically open the next time you open the program so you can get your file back. You can choose among the available files and decide which one you would like to Save as, Delete or Open

If the recovery pane does not open, go to the autosave location and manually search for AutoRecover files which are ended in ASD extension.

You can search manually for ASD files by launching the Microsoft Office application related to the file and clicking File > Open. Click the Down arrow next to Files of Type and then click All Files. Navigate to the ASD file you want to open and click Open. The file will open for editing, printing or saving. 

Recover Word Documents with H Data Recovery Software

However, AutoRecover is not enough when the automatically saved Word document versions are lost due to mistaken deletion, virus attack or other reasons. And what if the original files are missing as well? Our recommendation is the professional H Data Recovery Software.

Read our previous article to find out how to recover lost automatically saved .asd files.

Recover lost document is easy with H Data Recovery Software. 

Step 1. Go to our website and download the software with free trials!

Step 2. Install and Launch H Data Recovery Software and you will see the 6 modules designed for different data loss situations.

Step 3. Choose an appropriate module according to your data loss cause, whether it is accidental deletion/virus deletion, lost partition or emptied Recycle Bin. If you are not sure, try our new feature "Universal Recovery". It is a special module that scans deeper and quicker into the file structure and locates all deleted files.

Step 4. When scanning is done, you will be able to see all the files that can be recovered. Check the files you wish to recover and click Next to select a location to save these files. We suggest that you save these recovered files in another drive or another partition to avoid overwriting.

In summary, you can recover most unsaved files by using the built-in AutoRecovery/AutoSave function. But if auto-recovery is not possible due to missing autosave files or the original files, you can call in the big guns and use H Data Recovery Software to retrieve lost data. Remember to act fast because the longer you wait, the more likely the deleted files will get overwritten.