This is still solid advice, but the need to constantly save your work is disappearing as more office productivity applications are now hosted on the cloud. Windows Search is also a good tool for locating drafts of unsaved files.įor decades, the best practice when working on a project has always been to hit Ctrl+S every few minutes.

If you are using another application that is not setup to recover projects the same way as Office, but it does auto save your drafts, then your draft may be in the Temp file–this is a good place to begin your search. Now that you have learned your lesson, be sure to click Save As. You will select the draft that looks like your project and Office will load it for you.

In Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, you will want to open a new document and then go to File > Info > Manage Versions > Recover Unsaved Documents (or Workbooks, or Presentations). If you want see your precious document again then you will simply need to follow these steps. It is important to remember that blaming others or beating yourself up will not bring back the unsaved document. Maybe you were trying to carry on a conversation while shutting down your PC? Perhaps somebody else was using your computer and closed the application without saving? Or maybe you just had an old fashioned lapse in judgment and simply forgot to hit Save. Oversights like this can happen to even the most experienced PC users this is why virtually every productivity program comes with an undo button. Before you go out and do something crazy, like forsake technology and modern civilization, you will first want to see if Windows was nice and automatically saved you a copy. In one forgetful moment all of your progress is gone and your stomach turns into a giant knot. Have you ever closed an application and accidently hit ‘Don’t Save’? Poof.

Recovering lost notepad documents