How to Recover Unsaved Excel Files in 2022/2020/2019/2018/2016/2013/2007

Synopsis: Let us discuss the tips to recover unsaved excel files from 2007/2013/2016/2018/2019/2020/2021/2022.

To restore unsaved Excel 2016 files in Windows 11/10/8/7, you may also follow either one methods below to get your problems solved.

There are many methods for retrieving Unsaved Excel sheets. Some of them are described below

Methods to Recover Unsaved Excel Files

Method 1. How to Recover Unsaved Excel 2016 with AutoRecovery

Step 1. Start by opening a new Excel document on Windows PC.

Step 2. Click File > Tab Recent, check recently used Excel documents, and find the exact one – unsaved Excel document.

Step 3. Click Recover Unsaved Excel Workbooks and then wait till the Excel workbook is recovered.

Step 4. The Open dialog box will pop up, after which open the exact lost Excel document and click Save As to save the document into a safe spot on the PC.

Method 2. How to Recover Unsaved Excel Files

For recovering an Unsaved Excel file in Excel 2007/2016, follow the steps given below:

1. First, Go to the File tab and click on the “Open” tab
2. Now click on the Recent Workbooks option on the top left
3. Now scroll to the bottom and click on the “Recover Unsaved Workbooks” button
4. In this step, scroll through the list and search for the file you lost.
5. Double-click on it to open it
6. The document will open in Excel, now all you have to do is hit the Save As button

Method 3. How to Recover Overwritten Excel Files

In case you are using Excel 2010 or 2013, then you can easily recover an older version of the document.

For this, you can follow the given below steps:

1. Click on the File tab and select Info
2. Now click on the manage versions tab. There you will be able to see all the versions that were autosaved by the Excel application.

But you cannot view these autosaved versions until you have saved the file. Once you are able to save the current version of the file, all the previous autosaved files will vanish. So, for saving these files, you need to take a backup of the file. Making a backup of the file is discussed below.

How to Save a backup of an Excel file?

Taking a backup of Excel files makes it possible to go back to older versions in case of any mistakes. This can prove to be useful when you hit the save button when you didn’t mean it or when you delete the main original final.

You can follow the steps given below to get the backup in Excel 2010 and 2013 versions:

1. Go to the File tab and click on “Save as”
2. Now click on the Browse tab at the bottom
3. A Save as the window will open up. At the bottom, the Tools option is given.
4. Click on Tools and select “General options”
5. In the opened New Window, check on the “Always create backup” option

From above, every new Excel file that you create will have a backup file associated with it. But now the backup Excel files will have a different extension i.e .xlk

If you are using a Mac operating system, then you can use the next method to retrieve Unsaved MS Excel file recovery for Excel files for Mac Users.

Method 4. How to Recover Unsaved Excel Files for macOS users

For users that are using macOS, there are different steps that need to be taken in order to recover Excel files.

If you have OneDrive, you can use the same methods explained above to do so. For those that were not using OneDrive, these are the steps that you can use:

1. First of all, Go to the Start option and open Finder.
2. Now Go to Macintosh HD.
3. In case Macintosh HD is not showing up, you may have to find another name on your hard drive.
4. Go to Finder and then Preferences.
5. In the Next step, select Hard Disks
6. Show these items in the sidebar option.
7. You can also go to Users, then (your user name). Next is Library>Application Support>Microsoft>Office>Office 2012 Auto Recovery.

In the next step, choose the “Show hidden files” option if you don’t see any library folder there. You can do this by typing the following command into your terminal – defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

While these may be able to help some people recover any Microsoft Excel lost or unsaved files, they won’t work for everyone.

The best thing that you can do to avoid this situation is to always save and back up everything. But, unfortunately, that is something we often don’t do.

Method 5. How to Recover Unsaved Excel Files Using Professional Excel Recovery Tool

To recover unsaved excel files from 2007/2013/2016/2018/2019/2020/2021/2022, I have mentioned the above manual methods for both Windows and macOS users. But in case you are not able to get back these unsaved files manually, you can try the Professional Excel Recovery Software – Data Recovery. With Data Recovery, you can easily recover unsaved or deleted Excel files on Windows and Mac. It provides the Fast Scan and Deep Scan modes so that you can get your Excel files back with ease.

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Step 1. Download and install Data Recovery on your computer. Then launch it.

Step 2. Select the location of your Excel file, then click the “Scan” button to start the recovery process.

Step 3. After several minutes, you can preview the Excel files and choose the files to recover.

Conclusion

In this article, I have tried to explain the Top tips to recover unsaved Excel files on Windows and Mac. Also, I have explained the manual tips to recover Unsaved Excel files in 2007/2013/2016/2018/2019/2020/2021/2022. If these manual tricks don’t work for you, I suggest you download the Excel Recovery Tool to do the job easily.

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