10 Ways to Find a Lost Word Document (.doc)

Accidentally delete your work? Or save it somewhere and you can't find it? Or the power went out? Before you start frantically emailing your professor, follow these steps:

1. Send out a search party.
   In Windows, click Start, Search, All files and folders.
   Type what you remember of the name or simply *.doc to get all your Word documents.
   Select My Computer under Look in, and then under More advanced options, make sure Search hidden files and folders is checked.
   Then hit Search.


2. Still no luck? Check your Recycle Bin.
   Open it up and look through whatever files you've got. Did you find it? If so, right-click and choose Restore. Then if you're not sure where it actually restored to, perform a search for it.


3. Or you can pray for AutoRecover.
   Sometimes if Word crashes or closes unexpectedly, it'll still save what you had. Re-open Word. If a Document Recovery task pane comes up, double-click your document to open it and immediately Save As.


4. Search for AutoRecover files, yourself.
   In Word, go to Tools, then Options.
   Under the File Locations tab, double-click AutoRecover files and make a note of that path location.
   Click Cancel and Close.
   Open up that folder in My Computer or Windows Explorer and search for any .asd files. (Or another way to do this would be to run a search similar to step one but with *.asd instead of *.doc)


5. If you have Word set to automatically back-up your documents, there's still a chance here. Check the original folder for any .wbk file.
   In Word, click File, then Open.
   Navigate to the folder you think the file used to be located in and make sure All Files *.* is selected.
   Is there any .wbk file there? Select it and see if it's what you're looking for.


6. Still no dice? Send out a *.wbk search party.
   This step is the same as the first search party step, but now search for *.wbk files. You might find a few. Open them up, one by one.


7. Or search your temporary files.
   Again, this is like step one. But search for *.TMP files this time. You'll come up with a lot, so change the When was it modified? to the last week or so.


8. Or search even more of your temporary files.
   Some temporary files like to be unique. Search for those with ~*.* this time.


9. Open up C:\Documents and Settings\*USERNAME*\Local Settings\Temp
   This is a hidden folder, so you'll probably have to use Windows Explorer. Hit Start, then All Programs.
   Go to Accessories, then Windows Explorer. Navigate to that folder, where *USERNAME* is whatever your computer calls you. Do you see your document in that folder?

If none of those steps work, there are also programs that will help you recover deleted files. So this is the 10th and final option.

What's important to understand here is that if you delete something, it doesn't actually get deleted. Rather, it sits in a pile waiting to be overwritten. So the best way to recover a deleted file would be to try to find it right away --before it's overwritten.

If you'd like to use a program, I'd recommend: Restoration, Undelete +, or Recuva. All are free. [There's also a newcomer to the scene for Windows, UndeleteMyFiles. Thanks Lifehacker! ~Kelly, 6/25/08]

I hope this helps. And remember: Jesus saves, but Buddha does incremental back-ups.

So, to turn on the automatic back-up feature in Word, check out Tools, Options, and the Save tab.

Comments

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[Monty]

If you know the name of the file, goto Command Prompt in Start>Accessories
change to your C: drive, and at the C:\> prompt type,

dir myfilename*.doc /s /a /p

[Alina]

omg. i love you so much right now

[Shark]

I lost a file off a corrupted floppy disk! Still trying to find it, so fingers crossed, but this has kept be from breaking down into tears...

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[Ryan Graves]

A combo of steps 4 and 9 finally worked! I love you guys, you saved me at least 2 hours! love you long time!!!!

[Two Dead Drives; Back Stuff Up]

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[gift from Ireland]

Thanks for the list. My mums computer gave up on her about a week ago. She's got it back up and running at the moment but it looked like she had lost about 5 hours of work but the .wbk thing worked for us.

Thank you so much!

[Eve]

Thank you SO much for this...I was not looking forward to retyping all that stuff...I'm now a card carrying member of backing up my stuff every ten minutes!

[Jobin Martin]

Though I had lost a few documents, I didn't try to recover it! I just had to type them all again!

Now I know how to do it. Thank you very much.

Jobin

[Dan Davies 23]

I used the command prompt search for temporary documents and lo and behold it worked. I found it!

Thanks guys you've saved me at least 7 hours work.

Though it took me a good 2 hours to find this site!

[dcoffin]

I like using the CLI or Command line interface. Open up a command prompt and at the prompt type:

dir \*.doc /s

Every file on the drive ending with .doc will be displayed. Also works great to find evil hidden trojans as well if you know what file your looking for and you use the 'h' switch.

[Mark Zurbrügg]

I love you so much thanks a lot you just saved me 3 hours redoing my geography coursework

[Watson]

When the newest Word 2007 archives older documents, where are these files stored? A Windows Search function doesn't even see them. Thanks.

[Liz]

Hey there. Excellent post.

As I assume you can sense a but coming ...

so, the file I have lost - went missing after I used it this morning.
some 500kb, i used it this morning, typed happily, yeaddayea

-> after i wanted to reopen it, it's gone ...
nada, nil, zero, nothing

I did everything from 1-10 - used the nifty little progs

-> still nothing.

the funny thing is, there is a shortcut of the file, that i have never ever created, but of course, the path is corrupted as the main file doesnt exist

any possibility to recover from there?

btw: i got windows xp, but step 9, i couldnt execute, no clue why?

anyways, thanks for this

[Celtic Gifts]

Great post! I just used your advice and got my doc back after a crash. I thought it was a goner, so thanks again for the post.

[Dan]

Thank you so much for posting all of this info. Nothing worked until I tried the free programs you listed. everything else I tried on my own was going to make me pay $$ to get my files back. Recovered my master's thesis thanks to this article... when i thought all hope was lost.
you rock

[Hot Penny Stocks Guru]

A little more detail.. If you can't see hidden files/folders:

1. open up My Computer
2. click the Tools menu - go to Folder Options
3. click the View tab
4. scroll down to Hidden Files and Folders
5. select Show Hidden Files and Folders

this way they will all show up regardless if you're using my computer or windows explorer to get to your temporary files. If you don't want to see all the hidden stuff once you're done looking just switch the setting back. hope this helps someone!

[Hack College - Another Reason]

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[Jen]

THANK YOU!!!

You just saved me from completely freaking out after losing an hour and a half's worth of essay writing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Josh]

Another good way is to do like you did under windows search, and there is another field there that asks when the document was modified. you can use this feature on anything, not just lost word docs. so set it for within the last day or so, and search *.doc to find all the .doc files made within that time frame.

[Pratik Mhatre]

Thanks I found my doc file YO Thanks again.........................................................................................................................................................................................*******************************************************************************************************************************************************************

[Kristi]

This article just saved me a day's worth of work!
Thanks!!

[Ryan Parker]

Looks like this got feautured somewhere