Have you ever worked on an Excel file only to lose your progress due to a sudden computer shutdown or accidental closure of the program? It’s a common issue that can be quite frustrating. Many users are unaware that they can actually recover their unsaved Excel files. What they do is use different third-party tools, and that too is unable to recover them. The good news is that there are ways to recover unsaved Excel files, saving you from the stress of losing your work. In this guide, we have explained how you can recover unsaved Excel files easily.
It often happens that we do some work on Excel and forget to save, or if the system gets shutdown unexpectedly, the file gets lost. Microsoft Excel is a popular tool for managing data and creating spreadsheets. Despite its usefulness, accidents happen, and unsaved files can be a real headache. Luckily, Excel has some built-in features to help you recover your work. One such feature is AutoSave, which regularly saves changes to a temporary file to prevent data loss. Another useful tool is AutoRecover, which creates backup copies of your workbook at set intervals.
It’s no news that Excel tools are widely used in almost every industry. With all this, the cherry on top is that you can recover your unsaved Excel files as well if something goes wrong. This seems somewhat of a miracle, but it’s no lie. If you are also experiencing the same issue and are unable to figure out a solution for it, then do not worry; we have everything covered for you.
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How to Recover Unsaved Excel Files
Microsoft Excel offers various functions that help in managing and processing the data precisely. If you are accessing Excel via a browser like Google Sheets or Microsoft 365, then there will be an issue with unsaved files. Because data gets saved automatically after a new entry, the main problem occurs with offline tools like Microsoft Excel, as most of the users use them without any internet connection. So, in this guide, we will focus more on Microsoft Excel.
Method 1: Recovering Excel files with Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Excel has a unique feature known as AutoRecover. This saves your file once in a while so that you won’t lose your data. This is one of the easiest methods to recover unsaved Excel files on your PC. Here is how you can do it.
- Launch Microsoft Excel on your PC.
- Click on “Open” from the left sidebar.
- Now click “recover unsaved workbooks.”.
- Finally, select the files that were saved automatically to recover them.
After following all the steps, your unsaved Excel file will be successfully recovered.
Method 2: By locating unsaved Excel files
Another method is to directly navigate to the location of the auto-saved Excel files on your PC. Here is how you can do it.
- Launch File Explorer on your PC.
- On the search bar, type “C:\Users\{your-user-name}\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel” and hit enter.
- Now you will land in the folder where all autosaved files will be present.
- Finally, open the files with Microsoft Excel to recover them.
After following all the steps, your unsaved Excel file will be successfully recovered.
Conclusion
This brings us to the end of this guide on How to Recover Unsaved Excel Files. Excel files have great importance when it comes to data management and I hope the above-mentioned methods will surely give you an upper hand in finding and recovering any unsaved files in Excel.
However, if these methods don’t cover your needs, there are external methods to recover unsaved Excel files. These may involve exploring temporary file directories, using Excel’s recovery options, or turning to third-party recovery software.