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I was working on a file for several hours. My Microsoft office license is through the institution where I am a researcher. Yesterday, I worked on a proposal for several hours and amassed a number of pages. Today, to revise that draft and submit my work, I was dismayed to find that my file could not be found. In thinking that I would return to my work after taking a short break, I closed my laptop; however I have OneDrive and autosave enabled and usually the files that I work on still exist when I open my device back up. This was not the case. I have looked everywhere for it, especially in 'Autosaved Files' and 'Recently Deleted', but i still cannot find it. The only thing I could find in 'Autosaved Files' was the very first version of my file, with no more than a paragraph on it. This led me to confusion for several reasons but mainly because if I have such an antiquated version of my work there, why do I not have a more recent version somewhere. Any and all help and advice would be appreciated. I have exhausted almost all troubleshooting tips and at this point, it would appear that I must do all of my work from scratch.
A family of Microsoft word processing software products for creating web, email, and print documents.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
You can see the file path to the most recently saved copy by doing the following:
Use the Menu Bar and choose File > Open Recent > More and then look under the file name. The file path is displayed there.
Dear AAwoyomi,
Greetings! Thank you for posting to Microsoft Community. We are happy to help you.
We've went through your post carefully and feel sorry to hear that a Word file is missing, and recent edits are gone in Autosaved Files.
Given that you have OneDrive and autosave enabled, if the file was created and saved in a cloud service such as OneDrive or SharePoint, we recommend navigating to the cloud location and checking the version history. You can refer to the following support article: Restore a previous version of a file stored in OneDrive - Microsoft Support.
Please also check if the following suggestions can help restore your changes:
Restore your OneDrive - Microsoft Support if file is saved in OneDrive or Restore a shared library - Microsoft Support if in SharePoint
If the file is located on Mac, and if you have used Time Machine to back up files, please also try to use Time Machine to recover the file's previous version.
If you still cannot find the new edits, we apologize for the trouble caused. In this situation, the best way to troubleshoot further is to contact the relevant support team, who has higher permissions to help you look for other ways to restore the file.
Since you mentioned that "My Microsoft Office license is through the institution" we suppose you have a Microsoft 365 work/school account organized by your organization. If so, we sincerely recommend you contact your Microsoft 365 administrator to raise a support ticket with steps in this article to contact the Microsoft support team. They have higher permissions to assist you directly. This would be the most efficient way to handle this case for you.
For reference: How do I find my Microsoft 365 admin? - Microsoft Support
If the understanding above is not consistent with yours, please feel free to post back and point that.
Sorry for the inconvenience again. Your understanding and cooperation are highly appreciated.
Thank you for your precious time. Have a nice day!
Sincerely,
Rhoda | Microsoft Community Moderator