As soon as your active Word, Excel file is closed, the AutoRecovery document (the one that may contain a full copy of the document at the last moment of editing before a crash), is actually deleted by MS Office. Let's say it another way, the AutoRecovery snapshots are temporary and only exist if Word or Excel apps terminate abnormally.
I'm trying to help a pal recover a lost word document. His computer crashed while he had the file open in word.
Auto-recovery was not enabled, so I was looking for the $xxx.docx version of the file. Of course something odd is happening. If I open (say) readme.doc from the hard drive the corresponding $eadme.doc file appears in the same folder as the readme.doc However when I open a document from a thumb drive (which is what my pal had done) I notice the $eadme.doc is NOT created on the thumb drive. Either it's not created at all. Or stored somewhere else. Using another doc file opened from the thumb drive I've looked for the temp file (Win 8.1) on the hard drive here:. 'C: Users AppData Local Microsoft Word'.
'C: Users AppData Local Temp' but can't seem to find it. Any education would be appreciated! -Problems Reply- See You should NEVER open a Word document on a thumb drive or other removable media. That is one of the best ways to lose your work. The copy with the tilde is not a copy.
It is a 'locking file.' It is intended to keep the original file from being opened in another application or by another user. It will not have any content. You should NEVER open a Word document on a thumb drive or other removable media. That is one of the best ways to lose your work. The copy with the tilde is not a copy.
It is a 'locking file.' It is intended to keep the original file from being opened in another application or by another user. It will not have any content. Thanks Charles!
I'm not very educated on how Word uses temp files. Given that AutoRecovery was not enabled my friend is likely out of luck eh? A little Googling helped explain to me why opening from a thumb drive was a bad plan: See Category: Views: 1 Time:2014-12-26.
By If your power goes out or your computer malfunctions when working on an Word for Mac 2011 document, all you have to do is open the application again. Word 2011 for Mac looks for and opens any AutoRecover files for the document(s) that you were working on when an unexpected crash occurred.
Your document opens with “Recovered” appended to the filename. Choose File→Save As from the menu bar to restore the original filename and location. Word for Mac can recover files that were open because, by default, Word autosaves your document every ten minutes while you’re working on it. If you want, you can change the save time interval within the AutoRecover setting as follows:. Choose Word→Preferences→Save from the menu bar. Word’s Save preferences are displayed. Change the number of minutes in the Save AutoRecover Info Every: X Minutes setting.
The default is 10 minutes. Entering a lower number saves more often, but you may notice Word is more sluggish when it saves so often.
Entering a higher number may make Word perform better, but you may lose more changes if a power outage or computer crash occurs. You can deselect this check box if you don’t want Word to save an AutoRecover file. You might do this for extremely large documents that take a long time to save. Of course, if you experience a power outage or computer crash, you will lose all your changes since the last time you manually saved the file.
You don’t need to select the Always Create Backup Copy check box. With AutoRecover and Time Machine, the bases are covered. The option is there only for backward compatibility.
Click OK when you’re finished. Rarely, Word might not automatically display the AutoRecover file for the document(s) you were working on the next time you open Word.
In that case, do the following in Word to open the AutoRecover file. Choose File→Open from the menu bar.
Type AutoRecover or type a keyword or phrase in the Spotlight Search box in the top-right corner of the Open dialog. Double-click the most recently saved AutoRecover file, or select the file and click Open. If you did a keyword or phrase search, use the Last Opened information to help you choose a likely file to open. If the file you want is grayed-out, choose All Files in the Enable pop-up menu, which allows you to open any file type. You can also use Mac OS X Time Machine to recover any file that you’ve saved at least once.
When you use Word for Mac, it’s nearly impossible to lose more than a few minutes’ worth of work thanks to AutoRecover and Time Machine.