How to Recover Unsaved Word Document on Mac | 9 Ways
Tracy King updated on Mar 24, 2025 to Mac File Recovery | How-to Articles
Tracy King updated on Mar 24, 2025 to Mac File Recovery | How-to Articles
In this article, you will learn 4 effective ways to recover unsaved, lost and deleted Word document on Mac with detailed steps: [1]recover with AutoRecovery; [2]Recover from Temp folder; [3]Recover from Recovered item in Trash; [4]recover with Word file recovery software.
To recover an unsaved Word document on Mac, you can check the AutoRecovery Word documents by clicking "File" > "Open Recent" > "Recover Unsaved Document" or using the navigate to this path: ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Word/Data/Library/Preferences/AutoRecovery.
Did you accidentally close a Word document on a Mac without saving it? Did Microsoft Word crash and fail to save your changes? Or perhaps you lost important Word files due to improper deletion, hard drive formatting, a virus attack, or system corruption? If you want to recover unsaved Word documents on Mac, we're here to help.
We have tested every recovery method for days, and this post will first explain different ways for unsaved Word document recovery on a Mac in any situation. Then, you can find tried-and-true solutions to recovering deleted Word documents on Mac as well. You can learn more about unsaved Word recovery with the following chart:
| Recovery Plans | Applicable Data Loss Situations | Success Rate | Golden Rescue Time | Reviews |
| High | Long (several days to several weeks) | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | |
| Medium | Short (several hours to one day) | ⭐⭐⭐ | |
| Medium | Short (several hours) | ⭐⭐⭐ | |
| Low | Very short (immediately) | ⭐⭐ | |
| Low | Short (several days) | ⭐⭐ | |
| High | Depends on backup frequency | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
How to recover unsaved Word documents on a Mac without AutoRecovery? To recover unsaved Word documents on Mac, you can try professional data recovery software that supports unsaved file recovery.
We highly recommend the reliable Mac data recovery software - EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac, upgraded with an unsaved document recovery feature that supports recovery of unsaved Word documents on a Mac with only a few clicks. Simply click the following button to download the trial version:
This software is functional enough to help you deal with various Word loss situations on Mac, including recovering unsaved Word files on Mac, recovering Word documents that disappeared on Mac, and restoring corrupted Word files from various storage devices. Besides unsaved Word recovery, this software can also help you recover unsaved Excel file on Mac, and also other Office files.
Download the trusted EaseUS unsaved file recovery tool and follow these steps to recover Word documents that are unsaved or lost from your Mac.
Step 1. Launch EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac. Choose the disk where you lost an unsaved Word document, and click "Search for lost files".
Step 2. On the left side of the scan results window, click "Type > Unsaved Documents". Use filters to choose Word doc files, and you can recover unsaved Word documents or other files on your Mac.
Step 3. Double-click to preview the selected lost Word files. Then, click "Recover" to recover unsaved Word documents on Mac without auto recovery.
Note: Be careful not to revert to the original location, as this may overwrite the file being recovered.
If this Mac data recovery program helps you restore the original Word document on Mac, don't forget to share it with your SNS.
Don't hesitate to download this unsaved Word recovery software and have a try, it's a trustworthy tool. Through the following real reviews from EaseUS data recovery tool's customers, you'll learn more about EaseUS.
Here are the pros and cons of using data recovery software to recover unsaved Word documents on Mac:
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However, we provide you with a video tutorial on Mac unsaved Word document recovery before other written tutorials:
Suppose you don't like to use a file recovery program; the five ways below allow you to recover Word on a Mac without software. Based on the features of Microsoft Word for Mac, there are three potential ways to recover unsaved Word documents after accidentally clicking Don't Save in Word.
Word for Mac includes an AutoSave option, which is turned on by default. The app automatically saves a copy of an open Word file every minute. Suppose Word freezes while you're working on a document or the computer crashes, so you lose the Word document on your Mac.
AutoRecover, a feature that is available in some Office applications, attempts to recover files automatically in the event of an application or system crash. It does this by periodically saving a copy of the file in the background. By default, AutoRecover saves a recovery file every 10 minutes. from Microsoft Support
In that case, you can use the AutoRecovery copy to recover an unsaved Word document with the changes or additions you made in your last Word.
Step 1. Open Finder on your Mac.
Step 2. Select Go from the top Finder menu. Then, go to Folder.
Step 3. Type in ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Word/Data/Library/Preferences/AutoRecovery and hit Enter.
Step 4. Open the AutoRecovery folder, and locate the files that start with the words "AutoRecovery save of". Find the one you want to recover.
Microsoft Word offers standard DOC or DOCX file formats that are compatible with almost every OS platform. Word 2022, 2020, 2019, 2018...2011 featured auto-saving, which enables us to recover a Word document before we could hit Save. The unsaved files that you have found in the AutoRecovery folder may be in ASD file format.
You can double-click the file. The document now opens in Word for Mac. Click the File menu and select "Save As". If the Word is not responding on Mac, you can try the following steps.
Step 1. In the Microsoft Office Word menu bar, click "File" > "Open".
Step 2. Navigate to the AutoRecovery folder and select the .asd file you want to convert.
Step 3. Click "File" > "Save As".
Step 4. Choose the format as .docx and save the file.
Check the advantages and disadvantages of applying this unsaved Word recovery method:
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Have you recovered unsaved Word files on Mac with the AutoRecovery feature? Don't forget to share this tutorial on social media to help more user!
Microsoft Office applications will keep previous versions for you, but you should ensure that OneDrive backup is enabled. If you haven't turned on OneDrive backup or SharePoint, the unsaved Word documents cannot be recovered via the Version History feature, and the Browse Version History will be greyed out.
Step 1. Open the Word document you need to retrieve the previous version on Mac.
Step 2. Check the menu bar and click the "File" tab to open the drop-down list. Then, click "Browse Version History".
Step 3. Then, you can select a wanted Word file version in the new pop-up window.
This method is easy to use, and you can check the basic benefits and limits of it:
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How to recover unsaved Word documents on a Mac without AutoRecovery? According to the unique features of Microsoft Word for Mac, you may still find the unsaved item in the Word Temporary files folder, which saves a copy of the unsaved document named Word Work File. Your Mac also temporarily keeps files in this temporary folder. However, it's not easy for many Mac users to find it.
Steps to recover lost Word documents on Mac by finding Word temporary files on Mac with Terminal:
Step 1. Go to "Applications > Utilities" and double-click "Terminal".
Step 2. In Terminal, enter open $TMPDIR, and you will be directed to the TMP folder, which keeps files temporarily.
Step 3. In the TMP folder, find and open the "TemporaryItems" folder. Right-click the desired Word files in it and "Open with..." Microsoft Word.
Step 4. Save the Word file by clicking on "File > Save As" and save it to another location.
Although the recover success rate of this method is low, but you can still have a try:
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The Word for Mac temporarily saves documents that the user has not yet saved themselves in a folder named "Recovered items" in the Trash. If there are no recovered files, this folder will not appear. Steps on how to find unsaved documents on Mac:
Step 1. Open "Trash" by clicking its icon on the dock.
Step 2. Look for a folder labeled "Recovered items" and click into it to look for your Word file. If you cannot find it, try the next solution.
You can check the pros and cons here if you want to recover unsaved Word from the Recovered Items folder:
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These methods for recovering unsaved Word documents are sure to help you. Don't forget to share on your social media to help more people.
Finding backups can be useful to restore unsaved Word documents on Mac because you may find the previous versions of your unsaved Word documents. You can find backups from your backup disk, Time Machine backups, or OneDrive backups.
If you don't have a backup that contains wanted Word documents, you should try other ways, and applying unsaved Word document recovery software can be a good choice.
If you lost a Word document that already existed by deletion, disk formatting, or lost documents because the Documents folder is missing on a Mac, you need to look for ways to recover deleted Word documents on Mac, which differs from the above ones.
Deleted items on a Mac will be moved to the Trash bin and stay there for 30 days before being permanently deleted. However, if you delete an item by control-clicking on it and selecting the "Delete Immediately" option, it will skip moving to the Trash bin process but delete the item forever.
A quick solution to recover deleted Word documents is to recover them from the Trash bin. Here are the steps:
Step 1. Click the Trash bin icon at the dock to open your Mac Trash folder.
Step 2. Find the deleted Word documents, control-click them, and select the "Put Back" option.
Sometimes, you can't find the deleted files in the Trash folder because you turn on the empty trash automatically on your Mac. In this case, you may permanently lose data.
If your Word documents were accidentally deleted, you can't find them in the Trash bin due to the time limit or Trash emptying. In this case, you should use professional and trusted data recovery software - EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac to help you recover deleted Word documents.
EaseUS Mac data recovery software is a specialized Mac data recovery software that can recover deleted files on a Mac in simple clicks, including your deleted Word documents. In addition, it can help you recover previous versions of Word documents on a Mac, so you never worry about deleting your Word documents by mistake!
Here are the steps to recover deleted Word documents on your Mac:
Step 1. Scan for lost documents
Select the location where your important Word/Excel/PPT/Numbers/Pages documents were lost and click "Search for lost files".
Step 2. Find lost documents on Mac
EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac will immediately start a scan on your selected disk volume. Meanwhile, the scanning results will be presented in the left pane. Select "Documents" and you can quickly filter the DOC/PDF/PPT/XLS files you've lost earlier.
Step 3. Recover lost/deleted documents
Select the target files and preview them by double-clicking them. Then, click "Recover" to get lost documents back at once.
If you have created a Time Machine backup before deleting the Word documents, you can restore the Mac from your Time Machine backup. Check out the following steps:
Step 1. Click the Time Machine icon at the top menu, and select the "Browse Time Machine Backups" option.
Step 2. Choose a Time Machine backup by the time and date, and click "Restore" to bring back your deleted Word documents.
If you find these methods helpful enough to recover accidentally deleted Word documents, share them with your friends on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram!
After suffering from the fear of losing your Word documents, you must not want to experience this kind of situation again. Thus, it's necessary for you to know how to avoid losing Word files. To avoid completely losing your files, you can:
An ever-unsaved Word document exists in the computer's RAM, not on the hard disk. Thus, the chances of saving a Word Document that has never been saved before are slim. Knowing this should give you a hint that you should save the Word document at least once whenever you create a new one. Make it a habit to press the save button or use the save shortcut "Command + S" more often when editing Word documents.
After you save your Word document, the AutoSave feature will work. To minimize the loss of progress on the file you are working on, you can change the frequency of AutoSave. You can go to "Word > Preferences" and click "Save" under Output and Sharing. Check all the items under Save Options (Recommended) and change the interval of AutoSave, for example, from every 10 minutes to every 5 minutes.
It's recommended to apply a reliable hard drive, especially a well-known brand of HDD or SSD, because the low-quality HDD or SSD may fail and be more likely to result in Microsoft Word crashes. Run an anti-virus program to prevent viruses from infecting Word documents, which may cause data loss.
Connect to a power source when editing Word documents to prevent the editing part from being lost due to a sudden power failure.
Following the four tips above will substantially decrease the risk of losing your Word documents. What if you carelessly deleted your important Word files on your Mac? No worry. Try the free method to retrieve permanently deleted Word documents with EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac.
Don't worry if you still have problems on how to recover deleted Word documents or unsaved Word pages on macOS. Read the questions and answers below to get additional help.
1. How to recover unsaved Word documents on Mac without Autorecovery?
There are at least two ways to recover unsaved Word files on a Mac. You can use data recovery software to restore unsaved documents or use Time Machine backup. To restore unsaved documents on Mac with Time Machine:
2. Can I recover a Word document I didn't save on Mac?
Yes, you can recover an unsaved document as long as other files don't overwrite the Word.
Open its current version and then click Version History to find the earlier version. Try Time Machine or EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac if this operation fails.
3. Where do I find Autorecover files in Word for Mac?
The AutoRecovery files are in a hidden folder on your Mac. Thus, it is impossible to find such files by simply navigating through Finder. To find the Word documents on your Mac, head to Go > Go to Folder and enter this folder path (replace username with your username):
Users > username > Library > Containers > com.Microsoft > Data > Library > Preferences > AutoRecovery
4. Can I recover an overwritten Word document on a Mac?
Yes, there are multiple ways to recover replaced Word documents on Mac:
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