Search results on www.cleverfiles.com
Search the website
| 1 Article found |
Forgetting to save or accidentally deleting an important Excel file after working on it for hours and days is a painful experience, but it doesn’t have to end badly. This article is here to teach you how to recover unsaved Excel files using several different methods, breaking each of them down into a series of easy-to-follow steps.
Over the years, we’ve noticed that the loss of Excel files tends to have the same causes, and being aware of them is the necessary prerequisite for avoiding them.
Excel users can be their own worst enemies. From overwriting important files to accidentally deleting files that weren’t supposed to end up in the Recycle bin, there’s no shortage of user errors that most Excel users end up making at one point or another. When addressed quickly, the consequences of these and other errors can be erased or at least greatly minimized.
It’s surprising how easy forgetting to click the Save button can be when editing an Excel file. The good news is that Microsoft knows this, which is why Excel saves your work automatically for you, giving you a chance to recover your unsaved data when Excel closes unexpectedly.
Instead of manually deleting all files stored on a storage device, it’s often quicker and easier to format it. The only problem is that it takes just one mistake to format a completely different storage device by accident and wipe all Excel files that were stored on it. Fortunately, formatted files can almost always be recovered, but you must begin the recovery process promptly.
Most Excel files are created on computers running the Windows operating system, which is known to be the biggest target of desktop malware. In recent years, various strains of ransomware have been collectively responsible for the loss of a huge number of Excel files, and the situation isn’t getting any better. Malware infections can be difficult to deal with, but the recovery methods described in this article can be highly effective.
It’s not uncommon for Excel files to take multiple megabytes of storage space and include all kinds of complex functionality enabled by features like Visual Basic for Applications. Because of how large and complex Excel files often are, they’re far more likely to become corrupted than regular text files. While heavily corrupted files are best recovered from backups, less extensively corrupted data can sometimes be reconstructed.
Unlike the previous causes of Excel data loss, hardware failure is often impossible to recover from—especially if you’re not willing to spend a lot of money on professional data recovery services. The only thing that can save your Excel files is a previously created backup.
Data recovery software lets you effectively respond to Excel data loss and retrieve the missing files with a few simple clicks. Here’s how you can recover Excel files using Disk Drill:
Disk Drill can be downloaded for free and installed on any computer running Windows XP and newer, including Windows 11 (macOS version of Disk Drill is also available). The free version can recover up to 500 MB of data, which should be plenty for dozens of large Excel files.
Make sure the storage device on which the missing Excel files were stored is connected to your computer and launch Disk Drill. Select the storage device and click Search for lost data. It’s best to let Disk Drill finish scanning, but you can also preview recovery results in real-time.
You can filter the scan results to display only document file formats using the filters on the left. Before adding an Excel file to your recovery queue by clicking the checkbox next to it, it’s a good idea to preview it to verify its integrity. To complete the recovery process, click the Recover button and specify a suitable recovery destination.
With the help of Disk Drill, you can recover unsaved or deleted Excel files from any storage device that’s recognized by your computer.
Disk Drill can effortlessly recover data from HP, Kingston, Seagate, Western-Digital, SanDisk, and other HDDs.
All SSDs that don’t enable the TRIM command to instantly wipe deleted files can be recovered using Disk Drill.
Brands like SanDisk, Kingston, Corsair, Patriot, and Verbatim represent only a fraction of USB flash drives that can be recovered using Disk Drill.
It doesn’t matter how large your memory card is or what its exact specifications are. As long as your computer can recognize it, Disk Drill can recover Excel files from it.
Dell, Asus, HP, Lenovo, Acer, and other laptops with spinning hard disk drives or fast solid-state drives can be scanned using Disk Drill.
Disk Drill is a flexible data recovery software application capable of recovering lost data from all desktop computers running Windows XP or newer.
PROTECT The preparations for Excel document recovery should begin a long time before any data loss occurs. That’s why Disk Drill comes with useful data protection features, called Recovery Vault and Guaranteed Recovery. The former backup feature stores file metadata to speed up the retrieval of associated files, while the latter backup feature creates full copies of important files to ensure their recovery is possible under all circumstances.
In many cases, it’s not necessary to install third-party software like Disk Drill to perform Excel document recovery. The backup and recovery features included in Windows are enough to get the job done.
Recover Excel Files from Recycle Bin
Recover an Unsaved Excel File
Recover Unsaved Changes Made to an Existing Excel File
Recover a Previous Version of a Saved Excel File
Recover an Excel File from a Cloud BackupRecently deleted Excel files can usually be recovered from the Recycle Bin folder, which is a special storage area where deleted files are automatically moved to give the user one last chance to retrieve them.
As soon as you create a new Excel file, also referred to as a workbook, Excel automatically starts keeping track of all changes made to it. Should you lose your work because of a power outage, software error, or some other cause, you can recover the unsaved workbook with a simple click.
Similarly, Excel also automatically keeps track of changes made to existing files. If you lose your work before you manage to click the Save button, it will automatically display a Document Recovery pane with the automatically saved copy of your workbook. To recover it, all you need to do is click on it.
If you use the File History feature in Windows to back up your Excel files, then you can recover any previously saved version from your backup drive.
The latest version of Microsoft Excel can save files to OneDrive and keep track of all changes in real-time, constantly saving your work as you make edits. Because Excel files saved to OneDrive are located on Microsoft’s servers, they can be recovered even when you experience a hardware failure.
Dropbox is one of the most popular cloud backup solutions and an excellent alternative to iCloud. If you count yourself among its many users, then there’s a good chance that you’ll be able to recover your Excel file just by completing the following few easy steps:
SharePoint is Microsoft’s collaborative platform that helps teams share and manage content, including Excel documents. The steps you need to go through to download a SharePoint file are similar to those for downloading OneDrive files:
Excel comes with two incredibly useful features that can significantly reduce the likelihood of you experiencing irreversible data loss. The two features are called AutoRecover and AutoSave, and you should ensure they’re enabled before you start using Excel for any important work.
The AutoRecover feature automatically saves your work at a fixed interval, making it possible for you to recover it even if you forget to save it manually. To enable this feature:
As you can see, you can configure the interval and change the default value of 10 minutes to something else. We recommend the lowest value possible (1 minute), but keep in mind that it can negatively affect the performance of your computer.
The AutoSave feature saves Excel files in real-time to OneDrive every few seconds, preventing sudden power outages, system crashes, and other unexpected causes of data loss from destroying your hard work. To enable it:
For the feature to actually do anything, you need to select OneDrive as the location for your Excel file when saving it for the first time.
Updated on by Disk Drill Team
To recover a deleted Word document, perform this procedure:
You can recover permanently deleted Word document without any cost by using Disk Drill data recovery software for Windows. The free version of the software allows you to recover up to 500 MB of data for free before upgrading. It is a great way to recover some data for free and examine the features of this excellent data recovery tool.
Yes. There are several ways that you can recover a lost Word document without software.
To recover permanently deleted Excel files in Windows 10 follow these steps:
Yes, it is possible. Microsoft Office creates temporary copies of your files as you work in the application. These temporary files can be recovered if the app crashed before you can save your work. There is also an autorecover feature that will make copies of your files at set time intervals. You can set the interval to your desired value.
Yes, it’s often possible to recover an Excel spreadsheet that was not saved because Excel automatically saves backup copies of all opened files.
Unsaved Excel files are automatically stored in the AutoRecover file location
drive:\Users\user_name\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel
on Windows, which can be changed from Settings.
The AutoRecover process is triggered automatically the next time you launch Excel following a crash:
Office 365, now known as Microsoft 365, is a subscription service that gives you access to Microsoft’s office applications, including Excel. Included in the subscription is OneDrive cloud storage, which enables the AutoSave feature in Excel. To recover an unsaved Excel document from the cloud:
Office 365 (now called Microsoft 365) applications store temporary files inside a local folder on your main system drive, such as
C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel
on Windows.
If you want to retrieve an unsaved Excel file on Windows 11, then your best option is the AutoRecover feature, which should be triggered automatically next time you launch Excel, allowing you to retrieve the most recent local backup.
REQUIREMENTS
Windows 10 64-bit/11 64-bit, 19.0 MB
Use Disk Drill 2.x/4.x for Windows XP+
AVERAGE USER RATING
NEWEST RELEASE
TOTAL DOWNLOADS
PRO CLIENTS
in 160+ countries
Also available for Mac OS X