Lost Word documents (Windows insider program, Windows Canary version)

Question

i recently was working with the canary version and i created two word files and i can`t seem to retrieve them now

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Moved from Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

Answer 1

Hello Siliman Brian,

Before going down the recovery path, a couple of quick questions to point you at the right direction:

• Did you save the files at least once before they went missing, or were they unsaved when Word/the PC closed?
• Were they stored locally on the PC, or in OneDrive?
• Did anything happen around the time they went missing — Word crashing, the PC rebooting, or a new Canary flight installing?

In the meantime, two quick first checks that catch most cases:

• Open Word and check File > Open > Recent. If the files were saved at any point, they'll usually show up here even if you can't remember where you put them.
• In Word, go to File > Info > Manage Document > Recover Unsaved Documents. This opens the AutoRecover folder where Word keeps copies of files that were never saved successfully.

If neither of those turns them up, let me know the answers to the questions above and I can narrow it down.

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Answer 2

Try the following steps in order on the Windows device where the Canary build was used.

1. Check Word’s built‑in recovery
   • Open Word.
   • If Word previously crashed, the Document Recovery pane may appear automatically with an Available Files list.
   • Open each listed file to see if one is the missing document, then save it to a known folder.
   • To remove files you don’t need, select the arrow next to the file name in the recovery pane > Delete > Yes.
2. Recover unsaved Word documents
   • Open Word.
   • If the files were saved at least once before:
     1. Open any Word document.
     2. Select File > Info.
     3. Under Manage Documents, look for a version labeled (when I closed without saving) and open it.
     4. Select Restore to overwrite the previous version, or Compare if needed.
   • If the files were never successfully saved:
     1. Go to File > Info > Manage Document > Recover Unsaved Documents.
     2. Select any file that looks like the missing document and choose Open.
     3. Use Save As to save it to a safe location (for example, Documents or OneDrive).
3. Search Windows for the files
   • Right‑click Start > File Explorer.
   • Select This PC on the left.
   • In the top‑right Search This PC box, search by:
     • Part of the file name (if remembered), or
     • File type, for example: *.doc to find all Word documents.
   • If nothing appears, enable hidden files and search again (some temporary or recovered files may be hidden).
4. If the files were deleted from local storage
   • If they are not in the Recycle Bin and not found by search, use Windows File Recovery:
     • Install Windows File Recovery from Microsoft Store (Windows 10 or 11).
     • Minimize using the PC to avoid overwriting deleted data.
     • Use the tool to scan the drive where the documents were stored (for example, C: or the user profile drive) and attempt recovery.

If the documents were stored only in a cloud location (for example, OneDrive or another cloud provider) and not on local storage, Windows File Recovery will not be able to recover them; use that cloud service’s own recovery or version history instead.

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References:

• Recover your Word files and documents
• Recover an earlier version of a Word file
• Find lost files after upgrading Windows
• Windows File Recovery
• Two documents are inaccessible after I updated Word - Microsoft Q&A