How to Recover Office (Word, Excel, PPT, PST) Files for Free

Wonder how to recover Office files if they are mistakenly deleted or unexpectedly lost? This post offers solutions to help you easily recover deleted or lost Office files as well as unsaved Office files.

Recover Deleted/Lost Office Files (Word, Excel, PPT, etc.)

For Windows:

If you deleted some Office files by mistake and emptied the Recycle Bin, you need to use a professional data recovery program to recover the deleted Office files. Still, the deleted Office Word/Excel/PowerPoint files from USB, HDD, memory card, etc. will not exist in the Windows Recycle Bin. You also need to use a professional data recovery tool to get back the deleted files.

Besides, if a computer or USB has problems and occurs sudden data loss, you may also turn to a professional data recovery application to restore lost data.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery, developed by MiniTool Software, aims to help users recover any deleted or lost data from various storage devices.

You can use this program to recover any deleted or lost files including Microsoft Office Word/Excel/PowerPoint/Outlook files, etc. You can also use it to recover deleted or lost photos and videos. It allows you to recover data from Windows computers, USB flash drives, SD/memory cards, external hard drives, SSDs, etc.

This data recovery program can recover data from various data loss situations and enables you to recover data when the PC won’t boot.

Download and install MiniTool Power Data Recovery on your Windows PC or laptop and check how to use it to recover Office files below.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

• Run MiniTool Power Data Recovery to enter into its main interface. If you want to recover deleted or lost Office files from a USB flash drive, you should connect the device to your computer beforehand.
• On the main UI, you can choose the target drive and click Scan. If you don’t which drive to select, you can click the Devices tab and select the whole disk or device and click Scan.
• It’s advised you wait for the scan process to finish. After that, you can check the scan result to find the target files that you want to recover, check them, and click the Save You should choose a new location to store the recovered files to avoid data overwriting.

Tip: If you only want to scan Office files, you can click the Scan Settings button on the left panel. Here you can choose the file types to scan. You can only tick Office file types like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook file types. To scan specific file types, it will deliver a faster scanning speed than scanning the whole disk/device.

Google Docs App or Documents Download on Computer/Mobile

Check the guide for Google Docs app download for PC/Android/iPad/iPhone. Also learn how to download documents from Google Docs on a computer or mobile.

Read More

For Mac:

If you use a Mac computer, then you should turn to another Mac data recovery program to help you recover deleted or lost Microsoft Office files.

Stellar Data Recovery for Mac is recommended due to its powerful features and high efficiency.

You can use this program to recover Office documents and any other types of files from various storage devices. Use it to easily restore files, photos, videos, emails, and more from your Mac computer and any Mac-compatible devices.

Aside from data recovery, this program also includes some other tools like Video Repair, Photo Repair, etc. You can use it to easily repair corrupted videos and photos and repair corrupted files after recovery.

Download and install this Mac data recovery software on your Mac and check how to use it to recover Office Word/Excel/PowerPoint/Outlook files below.

Data Recovery for MacClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

• Open Stellar Data Recovery for Mac to access its main UI.
• Select that to recover. You can choose to scan and recover everything or customize your scan by selecting file types. To recover Microsoft Office files, you can only select Documents and Emails. This will help scan Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint files, and Outlook emails. After selection, click the Next button.
• Choose the location or device that you want to scan and click Scan.
• After the scan, you can check the scan result to find the target files, check them and click the Recover button. Then select a new location to store the recovered files.

Microsoft Office Repair Tool | Repair an Office Application

Some free Office repair tools are provided to help you repair Microsoft Office or Microsoft 365 applications and repair corrupted Office files on Windows 10/11.

Read More

How to Recover Unsaved Office Files on Windows 10/11

1. Recover Unsaved Office Files with Document Recovery

If the Office app closes unexpectedly and you haven’t saved your recent changes, the next time you open the Office app, the Document Recovery will open automatically and list any files it auto saved or auto recovered and you saved most recently.

If you see multiple files in the Document Recovery pane and don’t know which file to save, you can check the creation time of each file that is under the file name. It’s probably that the file with the most recent time reserves the recent changes. You can click each file to open the document to review it. After you open any file, you can continue to edit it or save it. Still, you can also click the down-arrow icon next to the target file and choose options like Open, Save As, Delete, Close, or Show Repairs.

2. Search for Backup Files of Word, etc.

If you have enabled the backup feature of Microsoft Office apps, you may find a backup copy of your Office files.

To check if you have enabled the backup feature, you can open an Office app like Word, click File -> Options -> Advanced, and scroll down to locate the Save section. Tick the option “Always create backup copy”.

To restore an unsaved Office file, you can go to the office file backup path in your File Explorer. To check where you store the backup copies of your Office files, you can click File -> Options -> Save. Here you can see the AutoSave/AutoRecover location of the Office app. For the Word app, normally the path is: C:\Users\Usename\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Word\. Then you can copy and paste the path in your File Explorer to check if there is a backup file for the target document.

3. Use the Recover Unsaved Documents Option

If you don’t see the Document Recovery pane or don’t find any backups of your Office files, you can try the Recover Unsaved Documents option.

• You can open the target Office app like the Word app and create a new document.
• Click File -> Info.
• Click the Manage Document option and click the Recover Unsaved Documents option.
• Check if there is an unsaved document that you want, if so, select it and click the Open button.

Free File Backup Software for Windows 10/11 PC

It’s highly recommended that you back up important files or any other data to another place or device in case something goes wrong and the files get lost.

In general, you can make a backup of important Office files like Word documents to another location on your computer. You can also copy and paste them to a USB flash drive. Still, you can also sync the files to a free cloud storage device like OneDrive, Google Drive, etc. to have a backup copy.

If you have a large number of files or many large files, you may choose a more efficient way to fast backup files. You can use a professional backup program.

MiniTool ShadowMaker is a professional free PC backup application that lets you back up everything on your Windows computer.

You can use it to back up large files and folders at a fast speed. You can also choose a partition or several partitions to back up. You can even choose the entire disk content to back up. The target storage device can be an external hard drive, USB flash drive, or network drive.

It also has many other powerful features, e.g. Windows system backup and restore, file sync, schedule automatic backup, incremental backup, clone disk, etc.

MiniTool ShadowMaker TrialClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Click to Tweet

Conclusion

This post offers solutions for how to recover Office files like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook files from a computer, USB flash drive, etc. Possible solutions for how to recover unsaved Office files are also provided.

For more computer tips and tricks, you can visit MiniTool News Center.

To find more programs that MiniTool Software provides, you can visit MiniTool Software official website. You can try tools like MiniTool Partition Wizard, MiniTool MovieMaker, MiniTool Video Repair, MiniTool uTube Downloader, etc.

MiniTool Partition Wizard is a professional free disk partition manager for Windows. You can use it to manage your hard drives from all aspects. You can use it to create/delete/extend/resize/split/merge/format/wipe partitions, check and fix disk errors, test hard drive speed, analyze hard drive space, migrate OS to HD/SSD, convert disk or partition format, and more.

MiniTool MovieMaker is a 100% free video editor and movie maker for Windows. You can use it to trim video, add effects to video, add transitions to video, add subtitles to video, add music to video, and more. You can export the video in MP4 or any other preferred format.

MiniTool Video Converter lets you convert any video or audio file to your preferred format, download YouTube videos for offline playback, and record screen with audio.

MiniTool Video Repair lets you repair corrupted MP4/MOV videos. It is a 100% clean and free video repair tool for PC.

If you have any problems with using MiniTool Software products, you can contact [email protected].