If you often write, edit, or handle 
Word documents, you probably have first-hand experience with how painful, and how easy it can be to lose one.
Let’s say you’re organizing your working folder and deleting old versions of the document you’ve spent the last few days working on using the Shift + Delete keyboard shortcut, which skips the Recycle Bin and immediately removes files from your system.
Now, imagine you accidentally selecting the most recent version of the document instead of an older copy you no longer need and hitting Shift + Delete. Before you even realize what’s just happened, the file is gone, and there’s no obvious way how to recover it.
A scenario like this can be downright nightmarish depending on how important the deleted document was to you. The good news is that there are several ways how to recover a deleted Word document even if you’ve used the Shift + Delete shortcut, and one of them is so simple that it will take you just a few minutes to learn and use.
Method 1: Locate Word Backup Files
Depending on if you have the Always create backup copy selected, Word will automatically create backup files of your documents. These backup files have the .wbk file name extension, and you can open them just like regular Word documents.
The only problem is that the .wbk backup files can be someone hard to find.
How to Locate Word Backup Files
- Open Word.
- Click File and select Options.
- Select Save from the menu on the left.
- Find a field called “AutoRecover File Location” and note the location of the autosave directory.
- Head to the autosave directory and open the .wbk backup files just like you would regular Word documents.
Method 2: Restore Deleted Word Documents in OneDrive
For some time now, Word can save documents to the cloud, allowing you to access your files from anywhere and easily collaborate with others. To take advantage of this feature, you need to be a user of OneDrive, which is Microsoft’s file hosting service and synchronization service.
You will then get the option to save files to your OneDrive account instead of saving them locally on your computer. When a file is stored on OneDrive, you can enable the AutoSave feature by clicking on a button located in the top-left corner of the main Word window to save your documents automatically, every few seconds, as you work.
Because 
OneDrive has its own Recycle Bin, it can help you recover documents that were accidentally deleted using the Shift + Delete shortcut.
Steps to Restore Deleted Word Documents in OneDrive
- Step 1: Visit OneDrive and sign in.
- Step 2: Select Recycle bin in the navigation panel.
- Step 3: Select the Word document you want to recover and click the Restore button.
Method 3: Data recovery software for Windows
Disk Drill is a data recovery tool that delivers professional results even though it was developed with the average user in mind.
Thanks to Disk Drill, you can avoid spending hundreds and maybe even thousands of dollars on professional data recovery services while achieving the same results—just from the comfort of your own home and possibly even for free because Disk Drill lets you recover up to 500 MB of data without paying, which is more than enough for hundreds of Word documents.
Steps to Recover Deleted Word Documents on Windows
- Step 1: Download Disk Drill from its website.
- Step 2: Open Disk Drill.
- Step 3: Click the Search for lost data button next to your storage device.
- Step 4: Select Word documents for recovery.
- Step 5: Begin the recovery process by clicking the Recover button one last time.
The second you launch Disk Drill, you notice that it certainly doesn’t look like your average data recovery tool. For starters, Disk Drill has a beautiful user interface that makes it effortless even for complete novices to figure out how to recover deleted Word documents with it. In fact, the whole recovery process with Disk Drill boils down to a couple of simple steps, which we describe in great detail below.
When you instruct Disk Drill to begin the recovery process, its advanced data recovery algorithms start analyzing the content of your hard drive and looking for even the tiniest bits and pieces of files, which it can then piece together to recover the original file as if it was never deleted in the first place.
✔ All major storage devices are supported, so it doesn’t mean if you’re reading this article because you want to learn how to retrieve deleted Word documents from a traditional hard drive or a portable USB flash drive—Disk Drill works equally well with all kinds of storage devices.
