Easily recover an unsaved workbook in Microsoft Excel

If you’ve experienced the mishap of mistakenly closing a file while working on it, or losing it due to a power failure or gremlin in your computer, you’ll know how frustrating it can be. Fortunately, changes were made in Microsoft® Excel® 2010 and 2013 which make the process to recover an unsaved workbook much simpler.

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To take advantage of these changes, you need to have the following options enabled:

  • Save auto recover information
  • Keep the last autosaved version if I close without saving

Applies To: Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010 and 2013

1. To enable the Save auto recover information options:

a)     Select File
b)    Select Options
c)     Select Save and tick the Save AutoRecover boxes as shown below.

2. Select the File menu tab and Info option.

3. On the info page, click on the Manage Versions button

4.  Select Recover Unsaved Workbooks

5. Select the respective file and click Open

 The unsaved version of the workbook will be opened, thus no data will be lost.