Retrieving unsaved documents

If you haven't saved a document to OneDrive or one of the other cloud options, you might experience a situation where you lose your unsaved documents. Word has an AutoRecover feature that can help you avoid such a disaster.

When disaster strikes

There are many reasons why a document's changes could be lost. Word could have experienced a crash, closing suddenly before you saved the document, or your computer could have crashed or lost power, causing you to lose your work. Whatever the reason, Word can help by recovering the changes you made the last time AutoRecover saved the document.

Once you've experienced a crash or lost a document due to Word closing abruptly, you will need to open that document again. At this point, the Document Recovery panel should be open on the left, and you should see a list of recovered versions of the document, along with the original, which is the last saved version.

The following screenshot shows...