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Question
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How do I retrieve an unsaved word file on a mac - using mac office 2011?

Sailor70 asked on
Can't seem to find temp files anywhere

131 people had this question

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The answered status icon Answer
Daniel G. Grau replied on
Unsaved files are gone. You can:
  • Look in your trash for a "Recovered items" folder
  • Go to the Finder, select Go > Go to folder, type /private/var/folders and look for files named "Word Work File" inside a "Temporary items" folder.*  Option drag files or folders to the Desktop (or anywhere else) before dropping them on Word's icon. Don't delete anything!
However, the chances of finding anything useful are remote.

To avoid losing data in the future, save your files as soon as you create them. To reduce the chance that this will happen again, follow Jim Gordon's tip to verify/repair your disk. Also use that same utility to repair permissions (there's a button to do that).


*  Pressing Command F (i.e., File > Find) and searching for "Word Work File" worked for user Lyn Yeowart.

----------------------------------- 


There are three important concepts often mentioned in this forum:

AutoSave: This functionality is not currently offered by Word, where the only AutoSave available is your fingers. Lion offers AutoSave in Lion-aware applications (how it works depends on each application), which can actually be destructive if you enter temporary changes that you don't intend to save (as in "Lets see how this picture would look here" or "How many words remain if I delete this?"). For Lion's AutoSave to kick in, you first need to save the document.

AutoRecover: Pros: Lets you recover unsaved changes to a file if Word crashes, in which case Word will offer to recover the file after reopening. Cons: (1) If the file was never saved, there will be nothing to fall back on, because AutoRecover is only triggered for documents already stored on disk. (2) If your file gets corrupted but Word does not freeze, there is a good chance that the corruption will carry over to the AutoRecover file. (3) After you quit Word normally, all AutoRecover files get deleted.

AutoRecover is not an AutoSave function:

  • If you've never saved your document (it is still unnamed) and Word crashes, you will lose all your work, whether AutoRecover was enabled or not.
  • If a document contains unsaved changes and you attempt to close it, Word will ask you to save changes. This will be your only chance to get the document on disk, whether AutoRecover was enabled or not.
  • If the document is on disk and AutoRecover is enabled, Word will periodically save temporary files that will be used to rebuild your document only if Word crashes. After you quit normally, these files disappear.
  • Sometimes Word leaves AutoRecover files behind. Just in case, check this folder: YourHomeFolder/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 2011 AutoRecovery and try to open any files in there. If you are successful, immediately do a Save As.

AutoBackup: This is a Word feature that keeps a copy of the saved file, although one version behind (this file is named "Backup of..."). If you leave the feature permanently on, within a couple of days you'll be finding "Backups of..." all over your disk. Despite that, it's the best choice, particularly when working in large documents that you cannot afford to lose. However, you still must do manual saves (and no save means no backup).
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The answered status icon Answer
Daniel G. Grau replied on

Unless you'd already saved the document before attempting to create the PDF, there's nothing you can do at this point, as in general the document would never have made it from RAM to your hard disk.

There could be temporary Virtual Memory file somewhere, in which case your only chance would be a file recovery utility.
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8 people found this helpful

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The answered status icon Answer
Daniel G. Grau replied on
Unsaved files are gone. You can:
  • Look in your trash for a "Recovered items" folder
  • Go to the Finder, select Go > Go to folder, type /private/var/folders and look for files named "Word Work File" inside a "Temporary items" folder.*  Option drag files or folders to the Desktop (or anywhere else) before dropping them on Word's icon. Don't delete anything!
However, the chances of finding anything useful are remote.

To avoid losing data in the future, save your files as soon as you create them. To reduce the chance that this will happen again, follow Jim Gordon's tip to verify/repair your disk. Also use that same utility to repair permissions (there's a button to do that).


*  Pressing Command F (i.e., File > Find) and searching for "Word Work File" worked for user Lyn Yeowart.

----------------------------------- 


There are three important concepts often mentioned in this forum:

AutoSave: This functionality is not currently offered by Word, where the only AutoSave available is your fingers. Lion offers AutoSave in Lion-aware applications (how it works depends on each application), which can actually be destructive if you enter temporary changes that you don't intend to save (as in "Lets see how this picture would look here" or "How many words remain if I delete this?"). For Lion's AutoSave to kick in, you first need to save the document.

AutoRecover: Pros: Lets you recover unsaved changes to a file if Word crashes, in which case Word will offer to recover the file after reopening. Cons: (1) If the file was never saved, there will be nothing to fall back on, because AutoRecover is only triggered for documents already stored on disk. (2) If your file gets corrupted but Word does not freeze, there is a good chance that the corruption will carry over to the AutoRecover file. (3) After you quit Word normally, all AutoRecover files get deleted.

AutoRecover is not an AutoSave function:

  • If you've never saved your document (it is still unnamed) and Word crashes, you will lose all your work, whether AutoRecover was enabled or not.
  • If a document contains unsaved changes and you attempt to close it, Word will ask you to save changes. This will be your only chance to get the document on disk, whether AutoRecover was enabled or not.
  • If the document is on disk and AutoRecover is enabled, Word will periodically save temporary files that will be used to rebuild your document only if Word crashes. After you quit normally, these files disappear.
  • Sometimes Word leaves AutoRecover files behind. Just in case, check this folder: YourHomeFolder/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 2011 AutoRecovery and try to open any files in there. If you are successful, immediately do a Save As.

AutoBackup: This is a Word feature that keeps a copy of the saved file, although one version behind (this file is named "Backup of..."). If you leave the feature permanently on, within a couple of days you'll be finding "Backups of..." all over your disk. Despite that, it's the best choice, particularly when working in large documents that you cannot afford to lose. However, you still must do manual saves (and no save means no backup).
_______________
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91 people found this helpful

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XavierCriel replied on
You just saved my day Daniel. 
I had the same problem and your solution worked perfectly! One of the temporary items in one of the subfolders /private/var/folders had a quite recent version.
thank you!

- There is no such thing as coincidence
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AriWalker replied on

 

 

Hello,

 

I am very desperate. I saved my work and the whole system crashed on my MAC.  What I could manage to retrieve is gibberish.  I am doing my masters and this was an 8 page collaborative paper I had just completed!

 

Please help, I have no one else to turn to!!

 

Thanks,

 

Ari

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Daniel G. Grau replied on

Ari, I assume you've already tried unsuccessfully to find your file in the two places mentioned above (a "Recovered items" folder in the Trash and the "/private/var/folders" hierarchy of folders). I'm afraid all that remains is trying to scavenge your disk for the file.

  • Go to the Finder and open the HD icon in your desktop
  • Press Command F (for Find)
  • Next to Search, select "This Mac"
  • Click on the first dropdown menu and select Last modified date
  • Click on the second dropdown menu and select within last
  • Click on the blank field and type 1 (the search operation will start at this point)
  • Make sure the third dropdown menu says Days
  • In the main menu bar, select View > Show view options and enable Date Modified
  • In the search results window, click on the title Date Modified to sort files by date
  • Read through the list to identify your file. If a likely candidate is found, Option Drag it to the Desktop (this will copy the file, making sure you don't move any required files out of where they might be needed), then try to open it by dropping it on Word's icon.

If you do find one or more file that contain part of the text that are looking for, but also a lot of garbage, try to clean it up as follows (you will still get a lot of garbage and no format at all):

  • In Word, select File > Open
  • In the dropdown menu, select Recover text from any file
  • Locate the file on the Desktop and open it

There are file-recovery utilities around, but all I've ever tried yield literally thousands of file bits and pieces and it's so very demanding, timewise, to sort thorugh the files that you'd be done sooner if you recreate the file by starting over.
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AriWalker replied on

Daniel

Thank you, I tried what you said and recovered a large file that fits the profile of what I've lost, yet i'm unable to open it and I've tried everything, included buying a decoder on the app store!
I give up. I'm so upset with this whole thing and this was an important document I spent countless hours working on!
No warning whatsoever was issued from word before it just went and crashed taking my hard work with it.

Again I appreciate your effort and prompt answer!
Guess I'm done!

Ari
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Daniel G. Grau replied on

What was the name of the file you identified as the candidate (mainly, its extension)?

 
  • Do you by any chance have Time Machine enabled and did a backup trigger at the time you were working on the file?
  • Did you have Word > Preferences > Save > Save Autorecover info... enabled?

There have been reports of conficting interaction between these two features.
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AriWalker replied on

I just verified the settings of my word preferences and I did have auto recovery enabled, i think for every 10min.  unfortunately i don't have time machine unable because it always asks for some pods or somethings and spends hours trying to locate one!! I don't know what this is all about!

At this point just meeting with classmate to redo the project from scratch.  I'm not bad with computers in general and can usually troubleshoot my way out of anything, but this time, the program gliched so much i could recover my document! - well i did recover it but it was either blank or full of unreadable characters!

the file i think is similar to the one i lost has name and extension as 9BDC62FFCC2F37F0-95595842A67E8D1F.itc
don't know if it means anything to you!

Thanks again
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Daniel G. Grau replied on

As they say, Ari, sorry for your loss.

I've never encountered an .itc file. It seems to be an iTunes temp file. The useful files, Wordwise (if you allow the neologism) you would have found have extension .tmp.

To avert the chance of this happening again, follow Jim Gordon's tip to verify and repair the disk, and also press the Repair Disk Permissions button.
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Katat19 replied on

THANK YOU SO MUCH!

I found several old versions of my Office 2011 for Mac Word overwritten file in the 'private' folder.

Please spread the word as lots of other forums are unable to help.

THANKS AGAIN - you've saved me a lot of time and stress!
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BryanErn replied on

I recently encountered this problem and have a great solution for it. Microsoft Word for Mac (2011) did create an autorecovery file for my unsaved / untitled document. Here is how I found it: 1) I typed "autorecovery" into the search field of a finder window and discovered what folder these autorecovery files are stored in. 2) I opened that window, went to view, and selected "arrange by ... date modified" so that I could quickly see the documents I was working on most recently. 3) I selected the first file and hit the space bar to get a quick preview of the contents, and then used the arrow keys to move down the document list until I found the one I was looking for. This one was actually labeled as a Word Work File, but was with the autorecovery files and seems to play the same role.

Of course, I shouldn't need to go through all that. What happened in my case was that, due to a bad battery, my computer was turned off completely when the power cord disconnected. While I was in the process of restoring my browser windows and documents, someone tripped on the cord and the computer shut off again. Apparently, Word will pull up unsaved files for you once. But if you don't save them before the next crash, they won't bother pulling them up again even if they're right there on the computer.

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