Help!! How to recover lost Microsoft Word document?

check the trash bin if it is not there then you can download a program free called winundelete and then search for the name of that file (your paper) and it should find it and restore it

Autosave documents sometimes save into the hidden folder "Temp files." Or "Temp documents" or something of that sort.

It's been 2 years since I've used a PC, so I can't really remember all the specifics.

Were you typing this up on a public computer, like a school or library? If so, every night or week, they do a hard erase, and everything's essentially gone forever.

However, if you were using a private computer, your file is still there. Somewhere. It just may take some time to find it.

Try using the Search feature to check your entire hard drive.

It's possible it just ended up being saved to a different location.

Good luck!

A similar situation happened to be 2 yrs ago.

1. Did you save your paper with a specific file name?

(If, not then it's probably still there somewhere with a differenty title)

2. Did you actually save it on your computer?

(What I did wrong 2yrs ago, was download my paper from my e-mail and on the dialog box, I clicked OPEN instead of SAVE so it opened and as I kept writing and writing, I continously pressed the save button but it wasn't actually saving anything becasue it was a read-only file, which means that it will not automatically save if your computer shuts down, even if your preferences are supposed to auto-save all documents during those kind of disturbances.

Use the "Recuva" program to do a search for possible deleted versions of your document.

You can find it here: www.piriform.com/recuva

Do not use your computer too much, especially for downloading, because if your file was really deleted by accident, that means the deleted file could be "written over" by something else, even temporary files, while you are looking for it.

In the future, I recommend saving multiple versions of your document with different file names (at least 2), and if you are sharing your computer with lots of people, it wouldn't hurt to upload your document (for free) to Google Docs.

First- Do you remember what directory you saved your paper in? If so, it should still be there.

Second- Microsoft Word remembers the last documents that it saved. Go to File, then Open. It should be there.

If all else fails, check the recycle bin. You may be able to un-delete the document if it is in there.

If your file over-write by another file then it will be very difficult to recover the over-written file. I suggest you to try any Word recovery tool to restore the Word file. But overwritten file recovery is to hard task.

It's either the work of a hacker (highly unlikely since firewalls, and all that other crap.) or the drive is corrupt. This is a cruel reminder to save a backup file!

You can do two things.

1. Check your recycle bin

2. Click Start, Search and search for your file, use the name you saved it under.

you'll probably end up having to take it to the Geek Squad at best buy.... cost some cash, but if it's that worth it to you then that's what ya gotta do...

otherwise... i would open up your C drive... and hit cntrl F... to do a search....

search for that file name, and see what comes up! might find it somewhere you don't expect...

look in the recycle bin