Several Word Documents Are Missing??

Question

I have been working on a DnD campaign for the last few years, with a word document containing a beastiary, a document containing history, and a document containing brief explanations of the game setting. All of these documents are gone!!! I cannot find them anywhere on my computer, I thought "maybe I moved it to google drive since I didn't want to pay for the 365 subscription anymore." When I checked, google drive didn't have anything either.

What could've possibly happened to my documents?? I never deleted them, I never put them in the recycling, I never moved them anywhere and yet... a full year and a half of work is simply missing?

Answer 1

Do you recall if the OneDrive folder showed “Files On-Demand” or offline copies before?

Open your local OneDrive folder in File Explorer, right click it, select Properties, then Previous Versions, restore a version from before the files disappeared. Then sign in to OneDrive online, check Recycle Bin, then use Restore your OneDrive to roll back the whole drive to an earlier date. Also open Microsoft Word, go to File, Open, Recover Unsaved Documents, and run a full search *.docx across your drive in case files stayed in a different path.

Answer 2

Hello, were they saved on your PC only or synced with OneDrive?

Search your PC using *.docx in File Explorer and sort by date. Open Microsoft Word, go to File, Open, Recover Unsaved Documents. Check Recycle Bin and C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office\UnsavedFiles. If you used OneDrive, sign in online, check Recycle Bin and Version History, then use Restore your OneDrive if needed.