How to Recover an Unsaved Excel File

File → Info → Manage Workbook → Recover Unsaved Workbooks.

That's the answer if you closed a file you never saved. Excel keeps a copy for four days, so do this now rather than later — and don't wait until you've finished reading.

If the file had been saved before and you've lost recent changes, the route is different, and it's below.

Which situation are you in?

What happened	Where to look
Never saved at all — new file, closed without saving	Manage Workbook → Recover Unsaved Workbooks
Excel crashed with the file open	The Document Recovery pane on restart
Saved, but you want an earlier version	File → Info → Version History
Saved over it with the wrong content	Version History, or Windows Previous Versions
Deleted the file	Recycle Bin, then OneDrive's own bin

⚠️ Before anything else: don't keep opening and closing Excel. Each restart can overwrite the temporary files you're trying to recover from. Work through one route at a time.

Route 1: never saved

1. Open Excel.
2. File → Info → Manage Workbook → Recover Unsaved Workbooks.
3. A folder opens listing unsaved files by date. Sort by date modified.
4. Open the likely one, and Save As immediately — it's still a temporary file until you do.

If the menu route fails, the folder itself is at:

C:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office\UnsavedFiles

Paste that into File Explorer's address bar with your own username. AppData is hidden by default, which is why typing the path works when browsing to it doesn't.

What you'll find is the state at the last AutoRecover interval — by default up to ten minutes before you closed it. Not everything, usually most of it.

Route 2: Excel crashed

Reopen Excel. A Document Recovery pane should appear on the left listing recovered files.

Open each one before deciding — the pane often lists several versions of the same workbook at different times, and the most recent isn't always the most complete.

Save the one you want under a new name straight away. The pane disappears once dismissed and doesn't come back.

If it didn't appear, check the AutoRecover folder directly: File → Options → Save, and copy the path shown in AutoRecover file location.

Route 3: you want an earlier version

If the file lives on OneDrive or SharePoint, this is the best option available and it works reliably:

File → Info → Version History. Every save is listed by time. Open one to inspect it, then restore it or copy what you need out of it.

If the file is only on your own drive, Windows may still have something: right-click the file → Properties → Previous Versions. That depends on File History or System Restore having been enabled beforehand, which for most people it hasn't. On a Mac, Time Machine is the equivalent.

This is the honest dividing line: files in a cloud folder are recoverable, files on a local drive mostly aren't.

The distinction that matters

Most people believe they're protected because AutoRecover is on. It isn't the same thing as AutoSave, and the difference is the difference between losing ten minutes and losing nothing.

	AutoRecover	AutoSave
What it does	Writes a separate recovery copy	Saves the actual file
How often	Every 10 minutes by default	Continuously
Where it works	Anywhere	OneDrive and SharePoint only
Survives a crash	Usually	Always
Gives version history	No	Yes

AutoRecover is a safety net with a ten-minute hole in it. AutoSave means there is nothing to recover, because it was never unsaved.

Three settings to change now

Whether or not you got your file back, do this before closing the article. It takes two minutes and it's the whole point.

File → Options → Save:

1. Save AutoRecover information every: change 10 minutes to 2 or 3. On modern hardware the saving is imperceptible, and it shrinks the worst case from ten minutes of work to three.
2. Keep the last autorecovered version if I close without saving — make sure this is ticked. Unticked, Route 1 above finds nothing at all.
3. AutoRecover file location — note the path down somewhere. You'll want it at a moment when you're not calm enough to go looking.

These are the defaults. The ten in that box is how much work you stand to lose, and it is the one number here worth changing.

Then the one that matters more than all three: save new files to OneDrive before you start work, not after. AutoSave only switches on for files already in a cloud folder — creating a file locally and moving it later doesn't retroactively protect the work you did in between.

Does this work in Google Sheets?

The question doesn't arise, and that's the honest answer. Sheets saves continuously and keeps full version history under File → Version history → See version history, with named versions and per-cell edit attribution.

There is no unsaved state to recover from. If you regularly lose work in Excel and your files aren't in a cloud folder, that's a reason to consider Sheets for those files rather than a reason to get better at recovery.

When it goes wrong

Recover Unsaved Workbooks shows an empty folder

Either the "keep the last autorecovered version" option was off, the file was saved at least once (making it Route 2 or 3 instead), or more than four days have passed.

The recovered file is missing the last half hour

That's the AutoRecover interval doing what it does. It's also the reason to change the setting to three minutes today.

The recovered file won't open, or opens corrupted

Try File → Open → Browse, select it, then use the arrow beside the Open button and choose Open and Repair.

Version History isn't in the File menu

The file isn't on OneDrive or SharePoint. There's no local equivalent built into Excel.

I saved over it with the wrong data

Version History if it's in the cloud. If it isn't, and Previous Versions has nothing, the earlier content is gone.

Common questions

How long are unsaved files kept?

Four days. After that they're deleted automatically, which is why acting today matters more than acting carefully.

Does AutoRecover work if I choose "Don't Save" on the way out?

Yes — that's exactly what "keep the last autorecovered version if I close without saving" is for. It's the difference between a recoverable mistake and an unrecoverable one, and it's one checkbox.

Will recovery software help?

For a deleted file, sometimes, if you stop using the drive immediately. For an unsaved file, no — there was never a file on disk to undelete.

Can I recover a file a colleague overwrote on a shared drive?

Ask whoever administers it. Corporate file servers usually run backups or shadow copies with a retention window measured in weeks — far better odds than anything you can do from your own machine.

Does Excel autosave to the original file if I have AutoSave on?

Yes, continuously — which has its own hazard. If you open a file to try something out, AutoSave writes those experiments straight into the real file. Use File → Save a Copy first, or switch AutoSave off for that session.

The short version

• Never saved: File → Info → Manage Workbook → Recover Unsaved Workbooks. Four-day window.
• After a crash: the Document Recovery pane, and open every version before choosing.
• Wrong version saved: Version History — which exists only for cloud files.
• Don't restart Excel repeatedly while recovering.
• Whatever you recover, Save As immediately. It's still temporary until you do.
• AutoRecover is not AutoSave. One leaves a ten-minute hole; the other leaves none.
• Set the AutoRecover interval to three minutes and confirm the keep-last-version box is ticked.
• Create files in a cloud folder from the start. Moving them later protects nothing retroactively.

Next steps: if the file was recovered but is behaving oddly, a bloated used range is the usual cause, and a recovered file that lost a sheet will show #REF! errors wherever formulas pointed at it. If the recovery pulled back an older copy and you're now reconciling two versions, combining them properly beats copying by eye.