My computer re-started overnight. How do I find an unfinished word document that was not saved.?

Question

Norton ran the virus search and automatically re-started the computer overnight, today I realized the letter I was composing is gone. Please help/

Answer 1

Unless your program uses an "auto-save" function, the document will be gone.

If it does, then you can try to open your word processing program, and look for the most recently used files it accessed.

You might see it there. However, I think it's probably gone. Sorry.

Answer 2

If you have the "autosave" feature turned on, simple start Word and it will offer to recover the document for you. If you do not get that , then the autosave is probably not on, so there is nothing to recover.

But if you want to look manually...

If there is a temp version of the file, its name will start with the symbol ~ Do a search for all doc files that start with ~ (type in: ~*.doc) and if there is one you should find it. If there are a bunch of files, check the date to help locate the right one.

Good luck ... and turn on the "autosave" for the next time. :-)

Answer 3

Depending upon what program you used to open it, you may be able to find a temp copy of it in the folder you last saved a document into. Open the program, select "save as" and find out what folder opens. Then navigate to that folder through your windows explorer, and turn your options on to view hidden files and folders through your tools menu. Then you should be able to see it if it is there. It will be hard to recognize the name of the doc, but pay attention to the file type.

If this doesn't work, go to your start menu, and select "run." Then type %temp% and hit okay. Then browse through the files in there until you find it.