Free File Recovery – How To Recover Lost Microsoft Word Documents

People carry around thousands of pages around easily with Word in laptop hard drives, external hard drives or USB flash drives. As any other digital data, these documents and files are not at all immune to damage. Accidental deletion or formatting, virus attacks, and hardware failures can all result in lost Word document. Without proper backups, the data stored in that lost document could be gone forever. How do we recover lost Word documents?

Solution One: Restore Deleted Word Documents from Recycle Bin

If you deleted Word documents using Windows File Explorer, you can find these deleted files in Desktop Recycle Bin. The Recycle Bin acts like a safe net to inadvertent operations. You can easily restore word documents from the Recycle Bin if you have not cleared the Recycle Bin or deleted the documents from the Recycle Bin.

Solution Two: the AutoRecover/Auto Save Function

The Office Word built-in AutoRecover/AutoSave function enables us to recover Word document easily from the automatically saved versions. If you didn’t save your most recent changes when a Word unexpectedly closed, the first and foremost solution should be implementing this function. Normally, after an unexpected closure, the Document Recovery task pane will automatically open the next time you open the program so you can get your file back. You can choose among the available files and decide which one you would like to Save as, Delete or Open.

To avoid losing all your work when accidents happen, make sure the Microsoft Word application AutoRecover/ AutoSave is turned on. In Word 2016, 2013, 2010, click File > Options > Save. Make sure the Save AutoRecover information every x minutes box is selected. Also, remember to check the Keep the last autosaved version if I close without saving box. If you are using Word 2007, click the Microsoft Office Button and select Word Options. Check the Save AutoRecover information every x minutes box. Optionally, you can change the location where the program automatically saves a version of files you work on, and change the time interval between each Autosave.

Solution Three: Recover Permanently Deleted Word Documents

If you have emptied your Recycle Bin, or have deleted the documents from the Recycle Bin, it means that your Word documents are permanently deleted. If you deleted Word Documents from USB flash drives, they are most likely permanently removed without going into the Recycle Bin. You need help from professional data recovery software to retrieve permanently deleted Word documents from emptied recycle bin or from USB flash drives. Professional data recovery tools like H Data Recovery Software offers different data recovery module to handle different situations. To recover files from emptied Recycle Bin, launch H Data Recovery Software and select the Emptied Recycle Bin Recovery module. If you lost Word documents from USB flash drives, choose Flash Memory Recovery instead. Once the scanning is complete, you can browse the results or filter the contents by file names or file extensions.