Can OfficeFileCache files created by Word be recovered?

Question

Opening a Word file after checking it out from SharePoint creates a folder for that unique Word file in the OfficeFileCache folder (C:\Users[Username]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office\16.0\OfficeFileCache\0\0\ ).

That folder is full of .R, .T, .P files and one .C4 file.

Can these files in any way be restored or recreated to a Word file again, and if so, how?

If not, how can Office 365 files that are checked out from SharePoint be saved while working on them, since autosave is automatically disabled for checked out files?

Answer 1

Hi @Sebastian Meyer,

Thank you for posting in this community.

Unfortunately, we cannot restore or recreate these .R, .T, .P and .C4 files as document again.

In fact, these files are generated when you open a file on SharePoint Online with a local app and these files are logging the file status. If you simply check out the file and open it with the local file, these files are not generated.

You can test this by using a local app to open an unchecked-out file on SharePoint Online, and a folder containing .R, .T, .P and .C4 files will be created in the OfficeFileCache folder as well.

They have nothing to do with the preservation of the document being checked out.

We all know that the document being signed out can only be modified and accessed by the person being signed out during the signing out period. Therefore, we just need to save the file by clicking the Save button or the shortcut Ctrl + S directly after modifying the file. Then click on the check-in button to synchronize the modified content of the file to SharePoint Online.

Reference: Check out, check in, or discard changes to files in a SharePoint library

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Answer 2

Thanks for the answer but there are still some unanswered questions.

Let's say I check out a file from SharePoint and start working on it with Word.

Where is the temporary version of the file saved, if I haven't clicked Save yet?

I actually did a test by checking out another Word file and I saw a new folder was created with a bunch of those temporary files. Every time I clicked Save, a new bunch of files were created.
But the files are completely useless because they can't be restored to a Word file.

The question remains: Is there a temporary file somewhere that can be restored after checking out a file from SharePoint?

Or are we actually editing documents on a burning platform where it depends on having pressed the Save button, otherwise risking losing hours of work if crashing happens?

By the way, the Word crash happened with a simple CTRL-C, having just marked a pretty large amount of text and images.

Answer 3

Hi @Sebastian Meyer,

Thank you for your reply.

I checked the information and indeed all new files checked-out in Microsoft 365 will check-out using the Office Document Cache.

I have discussed this with my coworkers, and we have no way to find the temporary documents that were checked out. The unsaved file contents should be saved in some part of your memory, and the file contents are only persisted when you hit save. As for the .R, .P, .T and .C4 files in the folder you mentioned above, they are simply information about the file that was recorded when the file was opened with the local app. We can't decompile these files to get the content of the files.

In your case, we recommend that you enable version control for your document libraries so that you can easily manage and access the previous content of your documents. Even in case of an accident, you can find the previous version and restore it.

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