There are times when, either due to an oversight, or due to a computer or network failure, we can reach lose excel file what we were working on. It is something quite annoying and that can irritate us since everything we had advanced, we have lost (or so we think). That is the importance of saving our progress from time to time.
Many are the people who think that a unsaved excel file cannot be recovered, but this It is not like this. In today's post we will show you different ways to recover that file which you thought was lost. In the same way, we will also give you some tips or preventions to prevent this from happening with your documents.
Unsaved File Finder
The first of the resources to which we recommend you go and the most frequent is the unsaved file finder which incorporates Excel. It may be in the same folder where you usually save it. Many times we can not find all the files which we do not save, but as a first aid method it will help us.
The steps to follow are the following: first you will have to open a blank file and click on the tab "archive«. This action will cause a menu to be displayed in which you will have to click on the option «insights«. Then you will have to click on «manage book» and finally in «recover unsaved books«. A file browser will then open in which you can search for unsaved documents.
OneDrive backup
This method is very useful for those people who are used to saving their documents and files in OneDrive since, from there, you will be able to recover many of the documents that you consider lost. This is due to OneDrive saves a backup of the latest version of your file.
To do this, all you have to do is go to your own OneDrive, find your file and do right click on it. A menu will be displayed in which you will have to click on «version history«. This will open the file list. Finally, click on the three points of the version you want to recover and it will start downloading.
Check auto save
Microsoft Office programs have an automatic saving option, something quite useful for these cases. This option will allow us recover the file even without having previously saved it.
To do this you will have to go to the tab start and then click on the section «View recovered documents«. Here we will see a list with the last documents that have been opened and that have not been saved correctly. To recover it you will only have to click on the file you want. The only fact to highlight would be that once have your file recovered you must re-save as excel file, as that backup will be deleted the next time you close Excel.
Excel Document Recovery
With this option you will not have to worry that the last changes have not been saved, since you can easily recover them with the document recovery function in the following way. First of all you must open excel, to later look for the function «Recovered»And click on«Show recovered files«. Then a panel will open in which you will read «Document recovery» and it will show the unsaved files. You will only have to open the document desired and give the save button.
Search the computer cache
This option may be more complicated for you, but it can always help us in case some other does not work. In the case of Windows, copies of the Excel files are periodically saved, which you can find in the cache on your computer. To access it you will have to enter C/Users/YourName/AppData/Local/Temp.
Temporary files are stored in the cache, but we recommend using this option when you have run out of all the others, since it will be hard to find your document and you will have to go testing all files That have tmp extension, which can take you a long time.
Other tips
First of all, we recommend that you Always have your OneDrive account linked to Excel, since if at any time your progress cannot be saved, backup copies of it will automatically be saved to OneDrive, thus preventing you from losing your file. You will not need to save the document, but closing Excel will automatically save all your work up to the last change made. Even so, we recommend that you always give the option to save, for what may happen. To link OneDrive to Excel you will have to perform the following steps, starting with open excel and going to the tab «Options«. Then you will have to click on the section “account«, located in the left column to later select the option «specific connected«. Here you will have to see if OneDrive appears within those services and, if not, make sure to add it.
Another option would be set auto save. By this we mean reduce the time between saves and saves. Default, Excel saves your progress every 10 minutes, so the time you dedicate to this application would come into play there. If you spend a lot of time working with this program or your files are very important we recommend that you reduce the auto save times, which can be done by going to the «Options» and then click on «save«. A menu will then open in which one of the boxes to select is "save autorecover information", and there we can choose the desired time for this option.
As we have seen, recovering unsaved files is not an issue that should cause us great stress, since thanks to all these options and many more you will be able to recover that file that you considered lost. If you want more advice related to the privacy of your documents, here we leave you a post about the passwords of your excel files that might interest you.