Where’s Excel Temp File Location? How to Find or Recover?

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When we forget to save a very important spreadsheet, or there is no time to save it at all due to an unexpected Excel app crash, I bet most of you would think of Excel temp files recovery. But where are Excel temporary files stored?

On Windows and macOS, the Excel temp file location is different. While for Windows 11, 10, 8, 7 or earlier, the Excel temporary file location is different as well. In this post, we will show you where's the Excel temp file location on different OS, how to find the temporary files and how to recover the temporary Excel files when they are not available in the Excel temporary folder.

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Where’s Excel Temp File Location?

Microsoft Excel can create a temporary file each time you work on a new spreadsheet. Just as its name implies, a .tmp file temporarily saves the whole contents of your workbook and all the changes you have made to it until you save and exit Excel.

Therefore, if Excel is closed in an irregular manner, its temp files won’t be deleted actually, so we’ll have a big chance to recover our unsaved data by getting back the Excel temp files.

There are enough forum discussions on the Internet where people ask what Excel temp file location is. The location where Excel temp files are stored varies in different operating systems and versions. The default directories are listed below:

For Windows 11/10/8/7/Vista:

C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Temp

For Windows XP:

C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Temp

For macOS:

/var/folders/(randomized 2-digit folder)/(user-specific directory)/T/TemporaryItems, for example, on my Mac: /var/folders/np/pp8q4yks7kdglbsf6ghlpfcw0000gn/T/TemporaryItems

How to Find Excel Temporary Files?

Now we’ve known the location of temp Excel files on a Windows or Mac, then it becomes very easy to find those temporary Excel spreadsheets. Let’s see the finer details.

For Windows Users

1. Press Window+R on PC to open Run window, and then input %temp% to access Temp folder directly.
   
2. Then browse and pick the wanted temporary Excel file to open or transfer.

For Mac Users

1. Open Terminal app on your Mac.
2. Type "open $TMPDIR" and hit "Enter".
3. Then go to TemporaryItems folder, and check if there is any file comes with a file extension of .tmp, .xlsx. Open or save to another location.  

How to Recover Excel Temp Files?

Have searched the temporary folders and found no Excel temp files there? Then the temporary Excel file on your computer might get deleted or lost due to various reasons.

In this part, we will cover 4 practical ways guiding you to recover temporarily saved Excel files without difficulty. All of these 4 solutions are workable for Microsoft Excel 365, 2024, 2021, 2019 and other earlier versions.

#1 Recover with 3rd Party Software

The most reliable and efficient way to retrieve Excel data must be adopting a piece of dedicated data recovery software. To be honest, numerous data retrieval tools are competitive enough on the current market. But if you want the highest chance of recovery, your second-to-none choice should be Cisdem Data Recovery.

It cannot only recover temporary Excel files, but also directly recover unsaved Excel files. What’s more, it allows users to restoring deleted and damaged Excel spreadsheets with clicks.

Trusted by over 2 million users, this program can recover 1000+ types of file (incl. XLS/XLSX, DOC/DOCX, PDF, JPG/JPEG, PNG, MP4, MOV, MP3, ZIP, RAR, etc.) from deletion, formatting, RAW partition, disk corruption, system crash, virus attack, Windows reinstallation and more. Thanks to its advanced scanning engine, Cisdem Data Recovery can find lost files fast and render your files for easy preview.

Here is the recovery example that will walk you through Cisdem step by step to recover temporary Excel files:

1. Free download, install and launch this program on your computer.
   Free Download Windows 11/10/8/7 Free Download macOS 10.15 or later
2. Choose Hardware disk, select the location where your lost Excel files were stored, and then click on Search for Lost Data.
3. During or after the scanning process, go to Type > Document > xls or xlsx file format to search for your Excel workbooks. Or you can go to Unsaved Files to search for the unsaved Excel file directly, if you are trying to restore an unsaved sheet via Excel temp files.
4. Select the files you desire to recover, click on Recover button. Choose an appropriate destination folder to save them.

#2 Use Manage Workbook Feature

The main reason why you want to recover .tmp files in Excel is that, you are trying to rescue an unsaved Excel workbooks. Then you can just get the unsaved Excel file with the Auto Recovery feature, instead of restoring a temp Excel file.

Manage Workbook is based on such built-in auto recovery feature. It enables you to view the previous of your workbooks versions. This is how to utilize Manage Workbook for Excel temp file recovery.

1. Launch Microsoft Excel app, open the most recent save, click on File tab.
2. Go to Info, Manage Workbook, Recover Unsaved Workbooks.
3. Browse the recent unsaved files to find the one you want.
4. Restore and rename it properly.

#3 Use Recover Unsaved Workbooks Feature

Another built-in AutoRecover feature of Microsoft Excel is Recover Unsaved Workbooks, through which unsaved spreadsheets can be also found without using Excel temp files. Please follow up the steps below to accomplish it.

1. Open Excel app again, select Open from the left navigation bar, choose Recent.
2. Click on the Recover Unsaved Workbooks button at the bottom.
3. Select the unsaved workbook you need to restore, give it a file name, hit on Open.
4. Head to File tab and then Save As to store the Excel file safely on your PC.

#4 Recover from OneDrive Storage

Many PC users prefer to configure OneDrive service for backing up their data and preventing unnecessary file lost. If you count yourself among them, congratulations, you are able to restore your disappeared Excel spreadsheets easily from online OneDrive storage. The tutorial is as follows.

1. Visit the OneDrive website, sign in with your Microsoft account.
2. Go to My files, browse and locate the copies for the unsaved or deleted Excel files. Select and click Download to save them to your computer.
3. Also, check the Recycle Bin from the left pane if you cannot find them in My files, select the missing Excel files and click on Restore. Then you can download them to your computer.

How to Open Excel Temporary Files?

The temporary Excel files could be extremely valuable when Excel crashes. If you’ve restored the temporary Excel files successfully, the next step is to open the Excel temp file and make further use of it to your need. There are 2 options to open this file at your disposal.

#1 Open with Excel App

Instead of double clicking the file icon to open it in Excel app (which often fails), you can try following steps to open the file:

1. Open Microsoft Excel app on your computer.
2. Go to Open > Browse.
3. Navigate to the folder containing the temp file, select the file and click Open.

#2 Change Excel Temp File Name Suffix

Another pretty simple recovery method is to change the name suffix of Excel temp files. Check out the instruction as following.

1. Go to the folder where Excel saves its temporary files and find the desired file as described in method 1#.
2. Change the suffix of this Excel temp file from .tmp to .xlsx or .xls.
3. Double-click on it to open and save it as an actual spreadsheet.

FAQs

1. What is an Excel temp file?

It is the temporary file created by Microsoft Excel while you are working on a workbook, which stores temporary information, such as unsaved changes, workbook structure information, editing data, lock information and so on. Not all temp Excel files are usable copy of your workbooks, it might be deleted when Excel closes normally.

2. What is Excel temp file extension?

It could be .tmp or .xlsx.

Also, a file begning with ~$ can be also a temp Excel file, which is locked.

3. What are the differences between Eexcel temp file and unsaved Excel file?

A temp Excel file is an internal temporay file created by MS Excel during various operations like file editing or management, while an unsaved Excel file is a workbook that stores changes that haven't been saved to the original file.

Temp Excel file is not a usable or complete workbook often, while an unsaved Excel file represents an actual and usable workbook. That's the reason why an unsaved Excel can often be opened normally, while most of the temp Excel files cannot.

A temp Excel file often comes with file extension of .tmp, while an unsaved Excel file often comes with file extension of . xlsx, .xls.

An unsaved Excel file is more useful than a temp Excel file to restore an Excel file that is left unsaved under different scenarios. 

4. Is it possible to recover temporarily saved Excel files?

Yes, it is possible.

According to part 1 "Where’s Excel Temp File Location?", you can check the files in the defaulted location. If you cannot find the files from the Excel temp location, you can restore via MS Excel's AutoRecover and get the unsaved files back, or use a 3rd party data recovery software to get the temporarily saved Excel files back. (See part 3.)

Bottom Line

That’s all it takes to deal with the recovery of temporary files in Excel. Excel temp file location plays a significant role when the spreadsheet we’re working on remains unsaved due to sudden application crush or human caused error. But don’t freak out even though temp files in Excel are not available. In that case, a 3-rd party like Cisdem Data Recovery would come to the rescue.