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Word Document Recovery Software macOS Catalina Ready!

Have you found your critical business Word documents missing, or intentionally trashed by someone? Are you using MS Word on your Mac, or sticking with Pages, the native Apple's Word processor on Mac OS X? Your priceless documents can be recovered if you act fast. Follow these instructions to learn how.
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These days, MS Word documents are saved in an open XML-based DOCX format, which is standardized and has a definitive file signature which can be easily picked up by Deep Scan. Older MS Word document files were identified by .DOC extension, and are also supported by Disk Drill's Deep Scan binary reconstruction method.

Alternatively, it's also smart to always check the items found by Quick Scan. Even though this Word document recovery algorithm locates less deleted files due to the way Mac OS X works, than the similar algorithms on Windows, it can still find multiple instances of recently deleted files. Anyway, Disk Drill, being a great free Word file recovery app on Mac, provides several methods sheltered under one central "Recover" button, and in most cases it does the best job possible.

Get Disk Drill Installed

If you don't have your copy of Disk Drill installed yet, and your valuable business and personal folders not protected with advanced Recovery Vault or Guaranteed Recovery options, it's time to do so. Download Disk Drill Basic, deploy it on your Mac, and learn how to recover Word documents right here.
  • 1Get Disk Drill
  • 2Deploy to Applications Folder
  • 3Launch It

When Can Disk Drill Help?

We all know, data loss is imminent, and it's only the matter of time how soon it may happen to each of us. You may be storing your Word documents on an external drive, or just on your system SSD, there are multiple uninspiring situations when your files may go missing.
How to recover deleted files after emptying the trash on Mac
You may erroneously delete or overwrite Word files needed. Your work USB drive may be initialized or formatted by mistake or due to a hardware glitch. MS Word may unexpectedly quit on you rendering active documents useless just in a matter of seconds. The MS Office AutoRecovery feature is not that reliable to recover unsaved documents, and pressing Save regularly may not be a solution either. Is there an ultimate Word document recovery Mac solution? Of course, and you are reading about the one right now.

Time to Start Your First Data Scan

Depending on where your lost Word documents were stored, you would be looking either at your system (local) Mac drive, or an external disk, or another location accessible to Disk Drill. Choose the partition where your lost files were, and click the "Recover" button in Disk Drill. Advanced users may experiment by tuning up the recovery options a bit. You may also navigate to Disk Drill's Preferences and disable searching for any other file formats but Documents -> DOC & DOCX (Microsoft Word Documents) for recovery. This may shorten the time required for scanning. Recover word document mac

Protect Your Work Folder

Disk Drill's data protection algorithms have zero footprint on your system performance and are safe to run, but the benefit may be huge. Recovery Vault increases the chances of a successful data recovery in multiple ways. Guaranteed Recovery will not let you ever lose your most important data. Both these data protection options are highly configurable and can be enabled in Disk Drill at any time. Did we mention they are completely free?

Recover Deleted Word Documents on Mac

After the data scan, you will see the list of found items that Disk Drill considers recoverable from the target drive. Depending on the scanning method you may or may not see the original file structure in place. Even if you are running Disk Drill Basic and haven't upgraded to PRO yet, you may use one of the several preview methods to verify that the found Word documents are recoverable and won't come out corrupted.
How to recover deleted files on Mac
Once the files you were looking for are located, mark them for recovery, and proceed with "Recover" button again. Choose the destination where the recovered Word documents should be copied to, better on a different drive, than the one you scanned. Word document recovery on Mac usually takes seconds, and your precious work files, or thesis, or other critical documents are back to life again. Recover word document mac

Frequently Asked Questions

Updated on by Disk Drill Team

To recover permanently deleted Word documents:

  1. Install and launch Disk Drill on your Mac.
  2. Select the disk that contained the lost Word documents.
  3. Click Recover to begin scanning the disk for deleted docs.
  4. Preview the documents the app has found and select those you want to be retrieved.
  5. Click Recover to restore the selected Word documents.

It is possible to recover an overwritten Word document on your Mac by restoring a previous version of the file. Microsoft Office keeps previous versions of all the files that it creates and allows you to recover them if necessary. This feature offers added protection and enables you to return quickly and easily recover from inadvertently overwriting a Word document.

To recover an overwritten Word document on Mac:

  1. Open a Finder window and navigate to the overwritten file.
  2. Right-click on the file to open it.
  3. Select Files from the Microsoft Word toolbar.
  4. Click Info > Versions and choose the version you was to use for the recovery.
  5. Click the Restore button at the top of the document.

Microsoft Office allows you to easily recover previous versions of a specific file. To use this feature, you need to right-click the file that you want to recover. Select Properties and then Previous Versions to view the available versions that can be recovered. Then choose the previous version of the file you want to retrieve and click Restore.

Deep Scan for Word Document Recovery Mac

You've already heard about all the data recovery methods Disk Drill is capable of. Deep Scan is one of them. MS Office for Mac OS X is known for being relatively unstable, so we recommend not only enabling auto-saving of your Word documents, but also using one or both shields in Disk Drill to enable data protection on your Documents folder. If the disaster already happened, Disk Drill's Deep Scan and other data recovery options are always ready to help!
See all file formats Disk Drill can recover

Learn How to Recover Word Documents Mac

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Real-Life User Comments and Reviews

  • Guitarontheflipside
    Guitarontheflipside
    I have a Lacie External Drive that was not recognizable by my Disc Utility and I was pretty hopeless about recovering my baby girl pictures. I actually thought the disc stopped spinning and have almost sent it to an expert... UNTIL... I ran across Disk Drill online. All I can say is THANK YOU, THANK YOU! It worked like a charm and easily penetrated the drive. Totally recommended.
    Read more
  • download.cnet.com
    download.cnet.com
    Disk Drill for Mac is a powerful tool that lets you scan your computer or other connected device for lost files and, with the paid version, recover them. While not all files are recoverable, Disk Drill uses a variety of techniques to find or reconstruct files that were lost or accidentally deleted, and is successful in many cases. Download.com staff
    Read more
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