How to recover a word file

Question

I lost a word file I have been working on for 4 months. Now it shows up as blank

Answer 1

What is the file size?

When it is open, how many words and characters show up in the status bar?

If you press Alt+F9 what do you see? (On many computers Alt+Fn+F9)

If you are seeing your document, write back or look here:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/all-texts-and-figure-suddenly-became-a-field-code/9b57b347-f62c-4e43-b773-a54d9d7fa195

Answer 2

Was the file saved locally or on OneDrive? If the latter, you may be able to retrieve it from the file history. If the former, you will be able to access the "Backup of <filename>.wbk" file from the same location--provided you had "Always create backup copy" enabled at File | Options | Advanced: Save. You may also be able to find an AutoRecovery backup in the location specified for "AutoRecover file location" at File | Options | Save.