You might also have Word files on your Mac if you are an Office 365 user. You might need to recover a Word document on a Mac for a number of reasons: Accidentally deleting files from your hard disk. The application crashes while you are working on a file. Damage to your hard disk or storage device that leads to corrupt or missing files. Jul 07, 2016 what's weird is that I wasn't trying to change my document, or where the replacement text came from.I 'undo' was greyed out from beginning.I had saved the doc as a pdf and opened in Acrobat 9 for mac, which shows the doc in Recent documents, but clicking on that says the doc can't be found.i have office 365 for mac, the MS Office I had was installed last year but I guess had only Word 2011.
- 2020-3-30 Word - Recover document if closed accidentally - How-To - Word This document, titled « Word - Recover unsaved documents », is available under the Creative Commons license. Any copy, reuse, or modification of the content should be sufficiently credited to CCM ( ccm.net ).
- How do you undo save of Microsoft Word? The undo button on Microsoft word undos what you have just done. You can save your Microsoft works document in 'saved as' to be a Microsoft word.
Summary
While editing documents, it is common to accidentally save over your work and lose important sections that were deleted. You can restore overwritten Word documents from locating the temporary files or restoring from an automatically-saved Previous Version. To not worry about losing files again, use EaseUS Todo Backup to back up your Word or Excel to avoid data loss in the future.
How to Recover an Accidentally Overwritten Excel or Word File
'I accidentally overwrote an Excel file and saved it, is there any way I can restore the overwritten file?'
'Does anyone know how to restore a replaced Word file in Windows 10, 8 or 7? I replaced a Word document on Desktop and saved the file. I need that saved-over document!'
Workable Solutions | Step-by-step Troubleshooting |
---|---|
Method 1. Recover Excel/Word Files from Temp Files | Navigate to the temp file location > Open Excel > Click File > Info...Full steps |
Method 2. Recover from the Previous Version | Create a new Excel/Word file > Select Properties > Go to Previous Versions...Full steps |
Overwriting or replacing an Excel or Word file is not a new problem for most Windows PC users. However, the issue is familiar, yet the solution still eludes most. So what can you do when your Excel or Word file gets overwritten or replaced? Here, we provide two reliable methods to restore overwritten Excel or Word documents. And, in the end, a smart Word/Excel backup solution is recommended to prevent data loss.
Once you lose an Excel or Word file by overwriting, do not save any more files onto the drive. Try Method 1 or 2 to get your replaced files restored in time.
Method 1. Find and Recover Excel/Word Files from Temp Files
Usually, while you are editing a Word or Excel file, Office will automatically create some temporary files as a backup in a specific location on your Windows PC if you don't save the document. And the temp files won't overwrite the previous ones. Therefore, if you saved over an Excel or Word document, you can try to find the overwritten file from the temporary file.
You cannavigate to the temp file folder location on your PC and find the Excel/Word temp files. Then, open and save the files as you need.
- On Windows 7: C:UsersUserNameAppDataRoamingMicrosoftExcel (Word)
- On Windows 8/10: C:UsersUserNameAppDataLocalMicrosoftOfficeUnsavedFiles
Or you can use the Recover unsaved file feature of Microsoft Office to recover Excel or Word from temporary files.
Step 1. Open Excel, and click 'File' > 'Info' > 'Manage Workbook'. Click 'Recover Unsaved Workbooks' from the drop-down menu.
Step 2. Select the unsaved file and click the 'Open' button. Then, on the pop-up window, choose 'Save As' to recover it.
After this, you should have successfully restored the overwritten Excel or Word document on your PC and can continue using it as usual. If this doesn't work, move on to the next method.
Method 2. Recover Excel/Word Document from the Previous Version
Step 1. Create a new Excel/Word file with the same name as your lost Excel/Word file or find your present, saved-over Excel/Word file.
Undo Microsoft Word Document Accidentally Saved Mac 2011 Product
Step 2. Right-click on the Excel or Word file and select 'Properties'.
Step 3. Go to 'Previous Versions', find and select the latest version or the version you want back, click 'Restore'.
This is all there is to it, your replaced or overwritten Excel or Word file will be restored with the same file name.
Note: We don't advise you try any data recovery software on the market for this task. Generally, all the third-party software only helps recover the original file after it is deleted from your storage device. In this case, the file has been saved over, and these tools will not help locate a previous version.
EaseUS data recovery software is no exception for retrieving an overwritten Word document. It is not designed to restore from the previous version. However, it's still a possible solution if all of the other attempts failed. There is a small chance to recover files that are not overwritten. Besides, it's good at recover files that are accidentally deleted or formatted. Don't give up any opportunity to get your data back. It's definitely worth a try.
- Recover deleted, formatted, and inaccessible data in different data loss situations.
- Recover photos, audio, music, and emails from any storage effectively, safely and completely.
- Recover data from the recycle bin, hard drive, memory card, flash drive, digital camera, and camcorder.
Step 1. Launch EaseUS Office file recovery software on your computer. Your hard drives, as well as external hard drives, will be detected and displayed on the disk map. Choose the exact location where you lost the Office files and click the Scan button.
Step 2. The software will start a quick scan after you click the Scan button, and very soon the deleted files will show up. It may take a little longer for the Advanced scan to find many more data. When the process is over, you can filter the Office files by the 'Documents' category.
Step 3. Select the Office files (e.g. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) and click the Recover button. You can browse for a different location to save the recovered files.
How to Back up Word/Excel to Avoid Data Loss
The best way to avoid document loss is by backing up your document regularly. Although Microsoft Office offers you the AutoRecover feature to automatically back up the unsaved files, it won't help protect the saved document. If you have a smart backup for the saved Excel or Word file, you can recover the backup even if it has been overwritten. In such a case, EaseUS backup software can be set to back up your files every half hour. It is useful:
- To back up database files that are frequently changed
- To back up shared files that are frequently updated
- To create multiple backup points for recovery or rollback
If you often edit important Word and Excel documents, you should back them up with this smart tool.
Step 1. On the home menu, choose 'Smart Backup'.
Step 2. A Smart Backup window then pops up, simply choose the files you want to back up from your computer Library, My Documents, Favorites, Computer hard disk partitions, or Desktop.
Undo Microsoft Word Document Accidentally Saved Mac 2011 Version
Step 3. The software will select a default location according to the available disk space it detects. You may also choose your preferred location to store the backup image.
Undo Microsoft Word Document Accidentally Saved Mac 2011 Version
Step 4. Click 'Proceed'. All selected files will be backed up quickly.