Please, please please let there be a way of sorting this out and please, please, please let there be someone on line who can help. I've just spent two hours re-writing a draft chapter and then Word stopped working. I closed it down and when it restarted all the work I had done was saved with autorecovery. Hurrah. Then it stopped working again and when it restarted this time nothing came up as autosaved. When I opened the document I had been working on it had gone back to how it was two hours ago. I can't believe it. Is there any way of getting my work back?

Hi Pamw, have you checked your recycle bin? Word doesn't usually delete any files that it loses. Otherwise, if you have auto recovery turned on (which you clearly have), you can search for the backup file. If Word finds the AutoRecover file, the Document Recovery task pane opens on the left side of the screen, and the missing document is listed as document name [Original] or as document name [Recovered]. There may also be multiple copies backed up at different times.

- Double-click the file in the Document Recovery pane so it opens up in the main document window
-Click Save As and give it a name
- Save the document as a .doc file.


Hope this helps.

Maybe. If it's W2007 then try to find the autorecover location by pressing the big round button, Options, and then the Save option to see where it is saving them. Then have a look for the file in Windows Explorer (it may save it with some random name so look at the date modifed to see if it is it). If there's nothing there, then no!

Thanks for your quick replies. It looks like I have lost it permanently though. It was recovered initially but I didn't have chance to save it as word stopped working again, and it looks like if you don't save a recovered file it gets deleted. I'm so annoyed. But shit happens!

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You might not have lost your work permanently! You should be able to download free file recovery software which will find the document you were working on.

Unfortunately it's not infallible - anything you've saved since you lost your work may have overwritten some or all of the deleted file but if all goes well you should at least be able to recover some of your work. Go to www.download.com and search for file recovery software. It's a pretty good site for free downloads and has the added bonus of not being infested with viruses.

Good Luck!

> I just had a similar problem with Word & Excel 2007 (although thankfully I haven't lost any work). There seems to be an issue that causes MS Office programmes to stall or crash when installing the most recent MS update files ( I think its the Genuine Advantage patch for Windows Vista) so if anyone hasn't had the updates yet , make sure you save your work before it runs!

hi john its very nice of you to post to the thread,

but the message posted is 5 years old :-)

anyway this information is useful to me!

so thanks anyway

love satchi