How can I recover unsaved Excel files on Mac? Yesterday I added new data to an existing excel document and shut my computer off by accident before saving the file. Is there a way to recover Excel file on Mac? Your help is much appreciated. – George
Assume that you are working on an important Excel spreadsheet and leave the Excel file unsaved on mac due to unexpectedly quit, system crash, power failure, etc. It is really frustrating and you may want to find a way to recover Excel not saved on mac just like George. Well, by following the guide below, you can easily recover unsaved or deleted/lost Excel file on Mac.
Before using AutoRecover to recover Excel file wasn’t saved on Mac, we need to know 2 concepts about AutoSave and AutoRecover.
AutoSave is a tool that can automatically saves your changes to the new document that you've just created, but haven't saved yet. It saves document every few seconds and helps to reduce data loss risk in case of a crash, power failure or user error, even you don’t click the “Save” button in time.
While, AutoRecover is the feature built in Office to recover unsaved document files automatically in the event of data loss. It allows you to restore to the last auto-saved version of Excel files.
By default, Microsoft Office Excel has enabled the AutoRecover option. Also, you can check and configure the Excel AutoRecover on your Mac by going MS Excel Preferences>Sharing and Privacy>Select “Save AutoRecover info” or “AutoSave”>OK.
In fact, if you have enabled AutoSave and AutoRecover, Office Excel will automatically recover your Excel files that left unsaved on Mac when you open Excel again, all you need to do is save the file immediately.
Also, there is another option to do Excel recovery by using AutoRecover:
1. If you close a excel file or quit Excel normally and choose Don't Save option, the file is deleted from the AutoRecover folder. So this way doesn’t apply to recover excel files that are unsaved intentionally.
2. If the excel file was never saved, there will be nothing to fall back on, because AutoRecover is only triggered for documents already stored on disk.
3. The method can also work on recovering unsaved Word and PowerPoint files on Mac.
4. If the method wouldn't work, all you need is a Mac data recovery tool like Cisdem Data Recovery to recover your Excel files now!
If you haven’t configured AutoSave or AutoRecover, you can try to recover Excel files that not saved on Mac from the Temporary folder by locating Excel temp files. Follow the steps below to find Excel temp files:
If your Excel file is left unsaved, even disappeared on your mac, you can open the Recent list to find out where the file is stored, then save or edit as needed.
To recover deleted or lost Excel file on Mac, the AutoRecover won't help, and you will need a professional data recovery tool or Excel backups to retrieve the Excel file on mac.
If you delete an important excel file accidently or have a saved Excel file lost due to unknown reasons, the above way can’t help you recover them. This is where Cisdem Data Recovery comes in.
Cisdem Data Recovery for Mac is one of the best Mac data recovery software for you to recover deleted, or lost excel files no matter which Office version you are using. And it also can recover lost photos, emails, videos, audios, archives, and other documents from internal/external hard drive, flash drive, MP3 player, digital camera, memory stick, memory card, iPod, etc.
Also, you can check the video tutorial.
Most of the Excel recovery tools require subscription, only few of them are free to recover your files on Mac, PhotoRec is one of them.
PhotoRec is a free Mac data recovery program, it is open source and does an excellent job to recover lost photos from digital camera memory. Besides photos, PhotoRec can recover archives, videos, audios, office documents and others.
Time Machine is the Mac utility enabling users to back up files to external hard drive. If you have enabled Time Machine on your Mac, you will be able to recover the Excel files from Time Machine backups.
When deleting an Excel file on mac, we just moved the file to Trash, if we didn’t continue to “Delete Immediately” in Mac Trash, it is still possible for us to recover the deleted or lost Excel file on mac from Trash.
If you get used to back up files via online storage services, such as iCloud, Google Drive, OneDrive, etc, you can also recover deleted Excel files easily.
To recover Excel file that not saved on Mac, the AutoRecover feature of MS Office Excel itself is absolutely the best choice, if this doesn’t work, you will need a professional Data Recovery software to dig out all versions of the Excel file, then recover as needed. While, for deleted Excel file recovery on Mac, Cisdem also deserves a try.
Rosa has worked in Mac software industry for more than eight years. She believes that the purpose of software is to make life better and work more productively. In addition to writing, Rosa is also an avid runner.
Laura
I love Cisdem. It truly recovers my lost Excel files in a more efficient and successful way compared with other free methods, though I need to do a payment.
Valeria
Thank you!
Stella
AutoRecover is a super useful feature to recover unsave excel, word or other documents, I like it.