Lost several day's worth of work in an Excel file?

Question

I opened, edited and saved a file in Excel several times last week without issue. This included adding a new sheet, then editing it over several days.

The file is in my work account's OneDrive.

Today I opened that same file to find that all my recent work (the whole sheet) has vanished; it seems to now be a version from 2 months ago, according to the last saved date. So naturally there is nothing in version history, and I cannot find any way to check for unsaved recent changes, but in any case, it was saved and opened again several times last week without issue, so I wouldn't expect unsaved recent changes to contain anything except perhaps the most recent edit.

How is this even possible!! Is there any way to recover the many hours of work I have lost?

My device is Windows 11, I have a personal account and a work account on the machine (and I have checked; it wasn't saved in my personal OneDrive).

Answer 1

POTENTIAL FIX

This just happened to me on a work computer - my file was saved on my work OneDrive and nowhere else. The computer installed an update overnight and this morning I had lost a months worth of changes though I know I use and save multiple times a day. Here's what I did:

In the altered excel file: File -> Options -> Save (in left panel)

I saw that my AutoRecover file location is set to C:\Users*Username*\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel - investigating this folder, I saw not one file related to the file I lost, so I looked to see if it was saved locally instead:

C:\Users*Username*\AppData*Local*\Microsoft\Excel\TemporaryBackupFile

and VOILA! Only one file in the folder and it was the last version of my file (last saved yesterday) labelled with today's date included before the file name. I just Saved As another version to my OneDrive AND my hard drive so I have more than one copy in case this happens again.

I hope this helps if it happens to anyone else again!!

Answer 2

Hello Ego,

Thanks for posting the query here in this forum.

Here are a few things you can try to troubleshoot the problem.

1. Open Excel and click on File.

In the Open tab, click Recent and tap Recover Unsaved Workbooks.

2. Recover from auto recover:

Start Microsoft Excel and navigate to File.

Select Info from the left menu, tap on the Manage Workbook position, and choose Recover Unsaved Workbooks.

find your missing desktop document and click Open.

3. Recover from temp files

C:\Users\User_Name\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office\UnsavedFiles.

4. Open Recycle Bin from your desktop or File Explorer.

Find your lost desktop files, right-click them, and select Restore.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions.

Give back to the Community. Help the next person who has this issue by indicating if this reply solved your problem. Click Yes or No below. “

Best regards, Oluwatosin.

Answer 3

Thanks for the response, but unfortunately none of those tips worked for me. (The first 2 appear to go to exactly the same place, there were no temp files to recover and the file was not in the recycle bin).

Any other ideas?

Otherwise, looks like I have to rush to redo the work before the meeting I had prepped it for.

:(

Any tips for how to prevent such an occurrence in future?

FWIW I am old enough that saving frequently is a deeply ingrained habit, despite the auto-save functionality, so I definitely didn't neglect to save it!

I will be wary of trusting OneDrive in future, that's for sure.

Answer 4

Hello Ego,

Thank you for the update. I'm sorry to hear that the troubleshooting steps do not help in resolving the issue.

On your windows 11, kindly confirm if Storage Sense is not turned on.

Open the Settings app and select System.

Click on Storage in the left pane and then toggle off the switch for Storage Sense in the right pane.

As suggested, it is a good idea to back up your files with OneDrive

As an extra safeguard, you can set up AutoRecover in your app.

Go to File > Options > Save.

Make sure the Save AutoRecover information every x minutes box is selected.

Make sure the Keep the last auto recovered version if I close without saving box is selected.

You can refer to the article: https://support.microsoft.com/office/save-back-up-and-recover-a-file-in-microsoft-office-a7f0a209-ad22-4212-bb53-6cd8e801a6fb

https://support.microsoft.com/office/help-protect-your-files-in-case-of-a-crash-551c29b1-6a4b-4415-a3ff-a80415b92f99

If you have any more questions or need further assistance in the future, don't hesitate to reach out. I'm here to help!

Best regards, Oluwatosin.

Answer 5

Storage sense was already turned off. AutoRecover already turned on.

I was using OneDrive, that seems to have been the source of my problem!

I have been regularly saving a copy of the file onto my hard drive while re-doing the lost work. Which is a pain, but I'd rather not repeat the problem.

In future I will return to my old way of doing things - storing files primarily on my machine and manually copying to OneDrive items I need on another machine; and only relying on OneDrive for things that are not important.

It would be nice to have a feature which saves a file to multiple locations simultaneously in order to always have a backup.