A power failure, a computer that freezes or simply forgot to save. You will not be the first to suddenly lose a document.
Autosave in Word
Of course you also know that regularly saving the document is important. However, it sometimes falls short if you are comfortable in a writing rhythm. Fortunately, there is automatic storage. With this, Word regularly saves the document you are working on. You can specify how many minutes you want to save automatically.
- click on File > Options > Save.
- Change the number of minutes in ‘Save AutoRecover data every minutes’. This can vary between 1 minute and 120 minutes. In general, a value that is neither too short nor too long is best. Too short: earlier versions are quickly overwritten and that makes it more difficult to revert to earlier versions. Too long: in the event of a malfunction, you will lose hours of work.
- Put a tick in front of Keep last auto-recovered version if I exit without saving. This allows Word to remember the latest version of the document if you accidentally exit without saving the document.
Note: AutoRecover is not a replacement for Save. The AutoRecover files are stored in a separate location on the computer. When you’re done with your work, you still need to save documents yourself under a logical name and in an appropriate folder such as Documents.
Restore a Word document
Open Word after the crash or failure and Word will automatically display the AutoRecover file. Opening is then a matter of double clicking. If this doesn’t work, open the file manually:
- click on File > To open.
- Click at the bottom Recover unsaved documents.
- Locate the document and double click on it; recovered files end in .asd or .wbk.