How to recover unsaved Excel files?

All Possible Ways to Recover Unsaved Excel Files / Data

 Excel (and even Windows) is highly unpredictable. It can crash anytime and can your Excel files with it.

 It’s a bad situation to be in…

… but there are ways to tackle this.

 Excel has a few functionalities where it can help you recover unsaved Excel files or data in some cases.

 Here are three scenarios where Excel’s in-built checks can help you recover files/data:

1.  You are working on a new file (which you haven’t saved yet) and your system/Excel crashes.
2.  You updated a file which has been saved earlier, and Excel crashes before you could save it.
3.  You made a mistake and saved the changes, but now want to go back to the previous version.

 Let’s see how to tackle each of these.

 Recover a New Unsaved Excel File (that has never been saved)

 If you are working on something and Excel crashes (or your system crashes), you can still recover that unsaved file.

 Below are the steps to recover an unsaved Excel file:

1.  Open a new Excel workbook.
2.  Click the ‘File’ tab
   1.  Click the ‘File’ tab
   2.  Click on ‘Open’
   3.  Click the Recent Workbook option (it’s at the top-left)
   4.  Click the ‘Recover Unsaved Workbooks’ button which is at the bottom
   5.  In the dialog box that opens, scroll through the list of unsaved Workbooks and open the one you want.
   6.  Save the file (using the ‘Save As’ option) with a different name in the location of your choice.

    By default, Excel saves a copy of all the unsaved files at the following location:

   C:\Users\[Your System Name]\App Data\Local\Microsoft\Office\Unsaved Files

    In the above address, you need to replace [Your System Name] with the name of your system (which is ‘Summit’ in my case).

    You can also go directly to this folder (where unsaved copies of Excel files are saved) by opening any browser and copy-pasting the address in it (in the place of URL).

    When you open any file from this folder, you will see a notification bar that will prompt you to save it.

   

    Click on it and save it at a new location with a name of your choice.

    Note: By default, all the recovered unsaved files are in the ‘XL SB’ format. When you save it, make sure you’re saving it in a format you want.

    With this method, you can recover files which you created but never saved.

    Recover Updated Excel Files (the previous version was saved)

    This method can be used for files which you have saved earlier, and Excel crashed (or the system crashed, or the power went off) when you were working on it.

    So you still have the previously saved file, but you lost the changes you did.

    Below are the steps to recover the updated Excel file:

   1.  Open any of the existing Excel Workbook.
   2.  As soon as it opens, you will see a document recovery pane that lists all the unsaved files.   Click on any of the file names to load the data.
   3.  When you get the data you want, save the file with a different name.

    Alternatively, you can also open the Excel application, and you will see the ‘Show Recovered Files’ option (as shown below).

   

    You can click on it, and it will open the same Document Recovery pane.

    Recover Overwritten Excel Files / Previously Saved Version (from within Excel)

    While in the above two methods you can blame Excel or Windows for crashing or the power failure, this one is purely on you.

    This is the case when you have a saved Excel file, and you update the data and save it again.

    But you end up making some changes you don’t want now (happens to me a lot).

    What you really want is to get the previous version back.

    While you can’t go back in life and correct your mistakes (unless you have a time machine, of course), you can do that in the wonderful world of Excel spreadsheets.

    In Excel 2010 and versions after that, Excel got an in-built feature to help you get the previous versions.

    Below are the steps to revert to a previous version of Excel (even when you have updated and saved it):

   1.  Click the File tab.
   2.  In the Info page, click on Manage Workbook, you’ll find all the previous versions of that file.
   3.  Click on the version you want to restore.
   4.   Save the file (preferably with a new name).

    When you select a previously saved version and open it, Excel will show you a prompt as shown below. You can click on Restore to get the previous version that you have selected, or can save it as a new file with a different name.

   

    Note that for this to work, you need to make sure that Auto Recover option is enabled. While it usually is enabled by default, it’s something you can check and ensure. I cover how to enable ‘Auto Recover’ later in this tutorial.

    When it comes to recovering unsaved Excel files or data, these are the three in-built options in Excel that can be used.

    Another way (which I highly recommend) is to save your files on the cloud (OneDrive or Drop Box).   This takes away a lot of worries as the cloud services keep previous versions of your files.

    Recover Overwritten Excel Files / Previously Saved Version (from the cloud – OneDrive/Drop Box)

    If you’re in the habit of saving your Excel files on the cloud – by using services such as OneDrive or Drop Box, you don’t have to completely rely on Excel to help you recover unsaved files or lost data.

    These cloud services also keep previous versions of your Excel files.

    Let me show you how to get the previous versions from OneDrive and Drop Box. I am sure there must be many more such services that have this functionality.

    Getting the Previous Version of the Excel File from OneDrive

    To get the previous version of an Excel file, right-click on the current version in OneDrive and click on Version History.

   

    This will open the file, and you can see all the previous versions of the file in the pane on the left.

   

    Click on the version that you want. It will show you the file content, and also give you the option to download that file or restore it.

   

    Getting the Previous Version of the Excel File from Drop Box

    Just like OneDrive, Drop Box also keeps the past versions of the Excel files that you can revisit and download.

    To get the previous versions, go to the file in Drop box web-portal and click on the three dots for the file for which you want to see the previous versions.

    Click on Version History option.

   

    This will show you all the versions of that file. You can open and download this version from   Drop Box.

     In case you have installed the Drop Box folder on your system and keep your files there, you can simply right-click on any of the files and click on Version History.

    Doing this will take you to the web version of Drop Box, where you can see and download all the   versions of the file.

   Article source:https://trumpexcel.com/recover-unsaved-excel-files/