How to Recover Unsaved or Deleted Word Document on Mac in 7 Ways

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.

Accidentally close a Word document without saving it on Mac? Microsoft Word crashed and didn't save your changes? Or lose important Word files due to improper deletion, hard drive formatting, virus attack, or system corruption? Don't fret if you lose unsaved or delete Word documents unintentionally. 

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 step by step. The various scenarios of lost Word documents and corresponding recovery measures are briefly explained in the table below:

Word document loss scenario	Ways to recover
✅Word shut down without saving on Mac. I need to recover the unsaved Word document on Mac without AutoRecovery.	Unsaved Word document recovery on Mac with file recovery software
🔃My Mac shut down and restarted. I lost my Word document because Microsoft Word didn't save my changes.	Recover unsaved Word files on Mac with AutoRecovery
👊Word crashed and didn't autosave on Mac.	Unsaved Word document recovery on Mac from a Temporary Folder
📗Accidentally closed Word without saving it on Mac.	Recover unsaved Word documents on Mac from Recovered Item
🚩I deleted Microsoft Word documents by mistake and emptied the Trash later. How to get back my lost Word files	Recover deleted Word Files on your Mac with EaseUS file recovery tool, Mac Trash, or Time Machine

How to Recovery Unsaved Word Document on Mac with Data Recovery Software🔥

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:

Download the trusted EaseUS 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.

Video Tutorial to Recover Unsaved Word on a Mac

Embedded with more useful features in certain collaborative situations than recovering pages of documents, Microsoft Word has become increasingly popular among Mac computers. Office 365 even allows users to create Word files on their Mac. Based on this, more and more Mac users are searching for ways to perform unsaved Word document recovery on a Mac.

We provide you with a video tutorial on Mac unsaved Word document recovery.

• 00:37 - AutoRecovery file location on Mac in Word
• 02:04 - Recover Doc from TMP Folder
• 03:06 - Recover Doc from Mac Trash
• 03:39 - Mac Recovery Software

Suppose you don't like to use a file recovery program; the three 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.

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. In this article, you will learn four ways to recover Word documents that are not saved when Word is not saving on a Mac.

Unsaved Word Document Recovery Mac with AutoRecovery

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.

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:

How to recover unsaved Word docs with AutoRecovery

Step 1. Open Finder on your Mac.

Step 2. Select Go from the top Finder menu. Then, go to Folder.

Step 3. Type: ~/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.

Step 4. Double-click the file. The document now opens in Word for Mac. Click the File menu and select "Save As".

Recover Unsaved Word Documents on a Mac from the TMP Folder

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.

How to Find Unsaved Word Documents on Mac from Recovered Items

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.

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.

How to Recover Deleted Word Documents on a Mac in 3 Ways 

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.

Where do the deleted Word documents go on a Mac?

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.

1. Restore Deleted Word Documents from the Trash

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.

2. Recover Deleted Word Documents Using Mac File Recovery Tool

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:

Note: You can create a backup by clicking the "Disk Backup" on the left first. The software will recover the document from the backup image. It can prevent further damage to your disk and data, making it safer and more reliable.

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.

3. Restore Deleted Word Documents with Time Machine

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!

How to Increase the Chance of Unsaved Word Document Recovery

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:

Tip 1. Save the Word Document Whenever You Create a New One

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.

Tip 2. Change the AutoSave Interval

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:

Step 1. Open Microsoft Word on your Mac.

Step 2. Go to "Word > Preferences" and click "Save" under Output and Sharing.

Step 3. Check all the items under Save Options (Recommended) and change the interval of AutoSave, for example, from every 10 minutes to every 5 minutes.

Following the two 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.

Bonus Tips to Avoid Losing Word Documents

Data loss on your Word documents can be avoided effectively if you pay attention to the following tips:

• Make it a habit to press the save button or use the save shortcut "Command + S" more often when editing Word documents.
• Ensure no important Word documents are in the Trash folder before emptying it.
• Connect to a power source when editing Word documents to prevent the editing part from being lost due to a sudden power failure.
• Run an anti-virus program to prevent viruses from infecting Word documents, which may cause data loss.

Recover Unsaved Word Docs on a Mac FAQs

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:

• Connect the drive containing your Time Machine backup to your Mac.
• Click the Time Machine icon and choose Enter Time Machine.
• Open the folder where the document should be located.
• Use the arrows on the right side to choose the needed backup version and search for the lost file.
• Click the needed Word document and click Restore.

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:

• Use Time Machine backup
• Turn to iCloud backup
• Run data recovery software