Recovering unsaved word doc on OSX

Great advice, worked for me!

In the temp folder, my word document was in a folder called TemporaryItems. I sorted by date modified so I could see the most recent at the top. Make sure you get the version you want. For me, there were several different versions of my document.

Unfortunately this didn't work for me :-( 6 hours work down the virtual gurgler...moral of the story: ALWAYS PAY ATTENTION WHEN CLOSING WORD!!! Either that or save, save and save again every time you write a paragraph...or set Word's AutoRecover options to save every minute and hope that it actually does so!

And the mother of all lessons learnt today: if you forget to do any of that, and you do misguidedly-click that "Don't Save" button, for the love of God, don't do what I did and go straight back into the freakin' document! I'm guessing that deleted the temp files that I may have otherwise found via this method, since it worked for so many of you. I'd be interested to know if anyone tried this AFTER opening the original version of a previously-saved document, or whether you all did it immediately after the erroneous close, or never had the document saved in the first place. I don't usually write an entire paper in one sitting so I'm guessing you guys don't either...yet it seems as though that's what you're all talking about.

THANK YOU SO MUCH. This was very helpful and I was able to retrieve my document that I spent 2.5 hours drafting. The strange this is that I was manually saving the documents every 2-3 minutes and the Autosave was on but it did not save any changes. It reverted back to my prior draft before changes. Weird!!!

General File Recovery

If you stop using the drive it's possible to recover deleted doc files that have not been overwritten by using recovery software such as Data Rescue II, File Salvage or TechTool Pro. Each of the preceding come on bootable CDs to enable usage without risk of writing more data to the hard drive. Two free alternatives are Disk Drill and TestDisk. Look for them and demos at MacUpdateor CNET Downloads.

The longer the hard drive remains in use and data are written to it, the greater the risk your deleted files will be overwritten.

Also visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on Data Recovery.

Thank you jcmckinn! You have seriously helped me. I'll just add here that if you don't find what you're looking for in the temp files because the temp file is too old, you can try looking in your trash at the folders called "Recovered files". I just recovered a temp document from a paper that I created and never saved over a month ago that away.

Stellaleyer wrote:

General File Recovery

If you stop using the drive it's possible to recover deleted doc files that have not been overwritten by using recovery software such as Data Rescue II, File Salvage or TechTool Pro. Each of the preceding come on bootable CDs to enable usage without risk of writing more data to the hard drive. Two free alternatives are Disk Drill and TestDisk. Look for them and demos at MacUpdateor CNET Downloads.

The longer the hard drive remains in use and data are written to it, the greater the risk your deleted files will be overwritten.

Also visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on Data Recovery.

FWIW, Data Rescue is now up to version 4 and can be ordered with an optional flash drive. The Link in "Data Rescue II" above is actually to something called "Wondershare Data Recovery For Mac".

CNET may not be the best place from which to download "free" software.

It was 11:30 at night, I had about two sentences to go on my assignment due the next day, and it froze, I could not find any of it. I followed your instructions and was able to retrieve nearly all of it. Thank you so much for this, it absolutely saved me and my assignment, and now I will "save" every couple of seconds I think!

I have been struggling for the last few hours trying to figure this out. I use Dropbox for storing my files and accessing online. I just accidentally discovered the dropbox saves all these different versions. I was able to go back sort of like I would have with Time Machine. I wasn't connected to Time Machine as I am away from my external hard drive so Drop Box saved the day for me!!!

I followed instructions on here to recover a document that I couldn't find in document recovery and Im pretty sure i found it as a .tmp file but I don't know how to open it in a word or save it etc and its all in codes please help its my entire assignment that got deleted.

This is super helpful. I think I have found the file but when I open it in texteditor it comes up as below. Any ideas of why and how to fix?

浯敭捲慩楬慳楴湯漠捣牵⁳敲敶畮⁥獩爠瑥牵敮⁤潴戠瑯⁨桴⁥湩楤楶畤污爠獥慥捲敨⁲湡⁤敤慰瑲敭瑮⹳䄠⁳敤慰瑲敭瑮漠⁦桴⁥湕癩牥楳祴漠⁦畁正慬摮愠汬猠牵汰獵獥愠敲爠瑥牵敮⁤潴琠敨唠楮敶獲瑩⁹潴攠灸湡⁤湡⁤湥慨据⁥潹牵爠獥慥捲⁨慣慰楢楬楴獥桔⁥潣浭牥楣污獩瑡潩牰捯獥⁳獵摥戠⁹湕卩牥楶散⁳獩猠潨湷

Hello, i've the same problem and i could solved it following these stheps:

- Open the file with OpenOffice

- Save the file in a new format

- Download this tool and run it with the corrupt file

- Save the recovered file in a new word document

It works for me, so hopefully help.

Hello,

I have Microsoft word for 2016, any advice? I know the exact time that i lost the version of the doc i wanted and accidently erased everything. I just want to get back to a version 1-2 saves away. I was not working on any kind of online place. I'm completely offline on word so none of those options work. I'm desperate. Weeks of work.

Hope,

As user Adi Himpson said above, you may need to do this:

Just in case anyone finds their way here by Google, as I did looking for how to find the Office 2016 autosave files...

You can locate them by going clicking the Go menu in the Finder, choosing Go To Folder and pasting:

~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Word/Data/Library/Preferences/AutoRecovery/

in the box.

You may need to rename any files you find there as .doc instead of .docx if they won't open properly.

jcmckinn

You saved my life!!! The night before a huge final exam I lost my word document that I was studying from. Thanks a lot!!

I lost my Apple I.D and I just spent about 30 minutes looking for my I.D and password just to comment and thank you.

In my case, for Word 2016, version 15.22, was a combination of going with Terminal (open $TMPDIR) and looking in the 'com.microsoft.Word' directory. I sorted by Date Modified and got the data I was looking for