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Larilyn's Tip of the Week: Microsoft Word - Recover Unsaved Documents

I know there are probably a lot of you who fall prey to a common workplace mistake.  

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You've worked all day.  You have all your programs open.  You have files and documents open.  You have ten bajillion tabs open in Chrome.

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And it's the end of the day.  Or the end of your patience. Which ever comes first.  You could soldier on and get work done today.  

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OR.  You could say to yourself, "self....I know I could do it tonight, but I'll be much more productive if I come back at this with fresh eyes!"  You agree with yourself and decide to leave everything open and lock your computer.

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The next day you come back to your computer, ready to tackle the task.  You log into your computer and your heart drops ten feet into the ground.  Everything is closed.  At some point in the night, your computer restarted.  Was it because the power went out?  Was it because of a computer update?  Does the "why" even really matter??

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Now before you totally lose your cool, let me remind you that now a days, most programs have auto-save functions.  And even Chrome has a restore pages option.  

"But Larilyn", you may say....."what if I didn't save my Word document to begin with?"

First of all.  Shame on you.  Always save your document when you start it so it will auto-save.  Second of all, don't fret.  When you open up Microsoft Word, it should prompt you with an auto-recovery box with an auto-saved version of any document you had open.  You can open and/or save it right from the box.

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"But Larilyn", you interject again....."it DIDN'T prompt me with an auto-recovery box!"  Or you may be saying, "I didn't know what the auto-recovery prompt was, so I just closed it!"

Well, if you'd just stop interuptting me, I could tell you: don't you worry.  I am here to tell you how to find the auto-recovery items without said prompt.  It is quite simple.

All you need to do is open Word, and click on File>Info>Manage Document>Recover Unsaved Documents.  This will pop open a File Explorer Box with any possible recovered documents that you can then open.  

AND SAVE!

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