How to Recover Unsaved Documents in Microsoft Word 2013

How to Recover Unsaved Documents in Microsoft Word 2013: Video

This video shows you how to recover unsaved documents in Microsoft Word 2013. Click here to view the entire training tutorial!

Recovering Unsaved Documents in Word 2013: Overview

A new feature in Word 2013 allows you to attempt to recover unsaved document files. If you want to see if Word has automatically saved a copy of an unsaved document that you were working on, then:

• Select the “File” tab within the Ribbon and click the “Open” command at the left side of the backstage view.
• In the area to the right of the command panel, select the “Recent Documents” command.
• Then look at the bottom of the pane that appears to the right. You should see a button far at the bottom of the “Recent Documents” section.
• Click this “Recover Unsaved Documents” button to launch an “Open” dialog box that displays any copies of unsaved documents that Word has recovered.

Note that it may be helpful to sort the files shown by the “Date modified” column in order to display the listing of recoverable files by date, as the file names will not be of very much use in determining their content. You can then choose the copy that you wish to recover from the list and then click the “Open” button within the “Open” dialog box to reopen the recovered copy. If you successfully retrieve the contents of the file, you should then save the file that you recovered.