[2024] How to Recover Unsaved Word Document on Mac with or without AutoRecovery?

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Connie Yu
Updated on September 06, 2024 Preview 72.0K Preview 5
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After a long process of editing a Word document on your Mac, it will be quite frustrating to leave it unsaved. When encountering this situation, take a deep breath and calm down first, don’t let the panic take your files away forever.

It is generally advised that you should use the AutoRecover feature in Word app to restore the unsaved Word documents, it works like life savior. But we are anticipating that some users don’t enable this feature or have tried AutoRecovery but failed. In these circumstances, we will look at some quick and easy ways to recover unsaved Word documents on Mac without AutoRecovery.

We will mainly focus on unsaved Word recovery in this guide, but if you want to restore a previous version of the Word file, or your files are just deleted/lost, the steps are also listed.  

 

4 Solutions for Unsaved Word Document Recovery on Mac

Word crashed suddenly and the Word document was left unsaved on your Mac? Well, if you have enabled AutoSave feature in your Word app, once you realized the Word file is not saved, you can immediately open the Word file or relaunch the app to restore with this AutoSave tool. 

If reopening or relaunching doesn’t work, there are 4 solutions for unsaved Word document recovery on Mac. 

#1. How to Recover Unsaved Word Document on Mac with AutoRecovery

If you have enable AutoSave in Word for Mac, we can restore unsaved Word documents from auto recover location. AutoRecover is a feature of Microsoft Word series helping users to save the files automatically when working (editing or modifying) on a Word document. By default, Microsoft Word automatically saves the files every 10 minutes. 

Where Do Unsaved Word Documents Go on Mac?

For Office Word 2016/2019/2021/Office 365

/Users/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Word/Data/Library/Preferences/AutoRecovery

For Office Word 2011:

/Users/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/Office 2011 AutoRecovery

How to Recover Unsaved Word Document on Mac with AutoRecovery?

  1. Go to Finder > Go to Folder, input the AutoRecover location to find the files.recover from autosave
  2. Open the AutoRecover word document with Office Word on Mac, then save the file.autosave location
  3. (Optional) If you cannot open the auto saved Word document in Word app, try opening with TextEdit.

 

#2. How to Recover Unsaved Word Document on Mac without AutoRecovery Easily?

If you haven’t enabled AutoRecovery, or you want a recovery solution with higher recovery rate, you can use dedicated Mac Word data recovery software. To make things easier, here we will recommend you the best Word document recovery tool for Mac – Cisdem Data Recovery

Cisdem Data Recovery for Mac is designed to safely get all your deleted, lost, formatted even unsaved Word documents back from your Mac hard drive, and other storage devices, and it does more:

  • Recover more than 200 types of files
  • Repair damaged Word, Excel, PPT, video and image files
  • Deal with different data loss situations: deletion, formatting, system crash, virus attack, etc.
  • Support all kinds of internal or external storage devices
  • Preview files before recovery
  • Restore files from iCloud
  • Recover files to local drive or Cloud
  • Recover files in a high success rate

How to Recover Unsaved Word Document on Mac without AutoRecovery?

  1. Free download Cisdem Data Recovery below. Install and run it on your Mac.
    Free Download macOS 10.9 or later
  2. Go to Hardware Disk, choose the hard drive where you lost the Word documents. Click on Search for lost files to start the scanning. recover word mac cisdem
  3. Go to Unsaved Files to find your unsaved Word documents, there will also display other unsaved files in Excel, PowerPoint, etc.recover word cisdem02
  4. (Optional) Also you can go to Documents > Doc or Docx folder to locate all the unsaved, deleted or lost Word documents. To find an unsaved Word file quickly, you can also use the filter tool or enter keyword in the search box. recover word cisdem 02
  5. Double click on the Word file to preview it, or open with TextEdit. Then select them and click Recover to restore the unsaved or deleted Word documents on Mac.recover word cisdem 04

tips: If you cannot preview a file, the file may be damaged, Cisdem will auto repair it and allows you to save the repaired 

recover word cisdem 04

 

#3. Recover Unsaved Word Docs from the Mac Temporary Folder

If you haven’t enabled AutoRecover, or you have tried AutoRecover but it didn’t work, you can launch Terminal on Mac to restore unsaved Word document on Mac after crash, from the Temporary Folder.

  1. Open Terminal by going to Finder > Application > Terminal.open terminal
  2. Enter open $TMPDIR in the window and press Enter.
  3. Open the Temporaryitems.
  4. Open the ~Word Word files with TextEdit application, then copy and paste the text to Office Word.

 

#4. Recover Word Document Not Saved on Mac Via OneDrive

You may have logged in Microsoft Word app with your OneDrive account, this also creates a backup of the file in the cloud. In the case that you left a Word document unsaved and could not find on your Mac, you can check if there is a backup in OneDrive.

  1. Log into OneDrive.
  2. Go to Home or My files folder, check if there is a backup of the unsaved Word document file.recover unsaved word onedrive 01
  3. If yes, open the file, then go to File > Version History, select the version that is unsaved on your Mac, then download the file.recover unsaved word onedrive 02

 

#5 Recover Word Document Saved over Mac from Recovered Items Folder

It’s possible for Mac to move the temporary files to Trash bin after rebooting. Thus you can try to restore a Word document not saved on Mac from the Recovered items folder in Trash bin.

  1. Enter the Trash bin on your Mac Dock.
  2. If Recovered items folder is present, double-click it to find the unsaved Word file and achieve the Word document recovery.recovered items folder

 

Unsaved Word Not Recovered? Just Recover A Previous Version of Word Document on Mac

Have tried all above methods but still failed to recover an unsaved Word document on Mac? To minimize the data loss, you are recommended to recover the latest version of the file. 

In this era of digital documents prevails, both operating systems and document processors build in the feature to save a copy of different versions and allows reverting to a previous version easily. There are 3 ways to consider.

#1. Browse Version History

We all know that Mac Preview builds in the feature allowing users to revert to previous versions, likewise, we can also get the similar feature within Word for Mac. But note that Version history in Office only works for files stored in OneDrive or SharePoint Online.

For Office 2016 & 2019 & 2021:

  1. Open the Word file whose previous version you want to restore.
  2. Go to File > Browse Version History.browse version history word
  3. From the list of all previous versions of your current file, choose the one you want and click Restore.

For Office 365:

  1. Select and right click the document > choose Version history.browse version history 365 01
  2. Find the version you desire > move to the three-dots icon and click Restore to recover the previous file version.browse version history 365 02

 

#2. Use Time Machine on Mac

If you have turned the Time Machine ON, your Word documents will be well backed up and you are able to get a previous version of your Word document.

  1. Connect the Time Machine backup drive to your Mac, click the Time Machine icon from the menu bar and Enter.
  2. Open the folder where you store the Word file. Or you can go to Finder > Documents, then find the Word file.recover previous word time machine 01
  3. You can use the timeline on the edge of the screen to check all the versions of the Word document, then select and press Space Bar to preview.
  4. Click Restore to get the previous Word document back on Mac.restore previous word time machine 02

 

#3. Manually Find the Previous Version  

If the Word document is not created by you, go ask for the original Word document from the sender.

If you are the one created the Word document, it is much likely that the current Word document has went through different versions, so track down to see if you have sent out previous version before via emails/iCloud, or deleted in Trash Bin, if yes, get them back and rename it.

 

FAQs about Word Recovery on Mac

1. How to find unsaved Word document on a Mac?

To find an unsaved Word document on Mac without going to autosave location, you can directly search on Mac using Spotlight. Press Command+F on your Mac, then enter a keyword of the file name, or sift through a bunch of files in .doc/.docx file extension. 

 

2. Can we recover unsaved Word document on Mac via Terminal?

It is true that Terminal helps us recover an unsaved Word document, but it just navigates us to the temporary folder and checks if the unsaved Word document is saved temporarily there. You can check the steps in the 3rd method in part 1. 

But we can use Terminal to recover a trashed Word document on Mac with cd. Trash command.

  1. Run Terminal on your Mac.
  2. Input cd .Trash and press Enter.
  3. Input mv filename ../ and press Enter.
    For example, my file name is "Unsaved word recovery mac" with extension .docx, so the command would be "mv Unsaved\ word\ recovery\ mac.docx ../".
  4. Then find the recovered Word document in Home folder.

 

3. How to open recovered files in Word on Mac?

If you have found the auto recovered Word document on Mac, you should open it in Word app, or use TextEdit if Word won’t open it. If TextEdit fails, try other word processors.

In the case that you’ve tried several word processors but still fail, or the file is just empty, the Word might have corrupted, either try Cisdem or online repair tools to fix it.

 

4. How to recover recently deleted Word document on Mac?

When the Word document is lost or deleted, the first thing you should do is to check the Trash bin. Since, all the removed items are transferred to Trash bin by default on Mac. Here are the steps to recover from Mac Trash.

  1. Go to Trash bin.
  2. Right click on the deleted Word file, choose Put Back.

 

5. How to recover permanently deleted Word document on Mac?

To recover permanently deleted Word document on Mac, Cisdem can help, no matter you have a backup or not. And if you have a backup of the deleted file in OneDrive or iCloud, the process is quite straightforward. Here we use OneDrive to illustrate:

  1. Go to OneDrive website, login into your Microsoft account.
  2. Go to My Files in the navigation pane, find Word documents that you lost or deleted on your Mac.
  3. Download and save the copy to your Mac.
  4. (Optional) If you cannot find the Word document in My Files folder, go to Recycle bin, select the deleted Word docs and click Restore.

 

6. Where is Manage Document in Word on Mac?

Windows users can easily find the Manage Document tool in Word app, it is located in the Info tab from Open menu, allowing users to recover unsaved documents or delete unsaved documents. However, there is no Manage Document tool in Mac Word app. Though both the Mac and Windows versions are designed with same workflow and functionality, there are slight differences on layout and others.

 

Final Words

We’ve already put together a comprehensive guide here for you to restore a Word document on Mac, which contains multiple helpful options under different situations. Basically, you can recover an unsaved Word document easily with AutoRecovery, but if this doesn’t work or you need a reliable long-term data recovey solution, you should consider Cisdem, which is well worth paying to rescue your files when data loss happens.

avatar
Connie Yu

Connie Yu has been a columnist in the field of data recovery since 2011. She studied a lot of data loss situations and tested repeatedly to find a feasible solution tailored for each case. And her solutions are always updated to fix problems from the newest systems, devices and apps.

Comments (5) Leave a Reply

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  • Lynne

    nothing in the autosave location. could you please help me recover an unsaved file remotely? i can pay.

    3 months ago commonReply

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  • Shirley C. Dominguez

    Finally come across a tool recovering unsaved document directly. At the end, autosave didn't work, we still need a 3rd-party software to rescue the data.

    1 years ago commonReply

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  • Ashlin Brown

    AutoRecover didn't work. Still I have no backups. Any other possible solutions to recover my deleted word document without the need of third-party tool? Please help.

    2 years ago commonReply

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  • Nick Bruce

    So far, the fullest guide to recover a word document, I managed to recover the docx file in my icloud backup. Thanks.

    5 years ago commonReply

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  • Shawn Thomas

    Awesome. This really helped me and I appreciate your work. Happy New Year 2018!

    7 years ago commonReply

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