How to Recover an Unsaved Excel File

Excel closed or crashed and the workbook was never saved, or was saved before the latest changes. Excel keeps AutoRecover copies for only a few days, so the steps below work best right away.

Reopen Excel after a crash

Start Excel. After a crash, the Document Recovery pane opens on the left and lists recovered workbooks. Click each one, check the contents, and use File, Save As to save it under a new name. Save before closing the pane; recovered files that are not saved are discarded.

Open Recover Unsaved Workbooks

For a workbook closed without ever being saved, go to File, Open, Recent and click Recover Unsaved Workbooks at the bottom of the list. The UnsavedFiles folder opens. Sort by date, open the newest file, and click Save As in the yellow bar at the top.

Check Manage Workbook for autosaved versions

For a workbook that was saved before but lost its latest changes, open it and go to File, Info. Under Manage Workbook, autosaved versions appear with the time each was made, including one labeled as the copy from when the file was closed without saving. Click one to open it read-only, then click Restore to overwrite the current file or use Save As to keep both.

Use Version History for OneDrive or SharePoint files

If AutoSave was on, the file lives in OneDrive or SharePoint and every save is kept. Go to File, Info, Version History, pick a version from the list on the right, and click Restore. The same list is available at onedrive.com by right-clicking the file and choosing Version history.

Find the AutoRecovery folder on a Mac

Excel for Mac has no Recover Unsaved Workbooks button. Reopen Excel; recovered files usually reopen on their own. If not, check File, Open Recent. Otherwise, in Finder press Command + Shift + G, open ~/Library/Containers, and search that folder for "AutoRecovery" to find the Excel AutoRecovery folder. Copy any file with a recent timestamp to the desktop and open it in Excel.

If nothing shows up. An unsaved copy exists only if AutoRecover ran at least once before the close, which is every 10 minutes by default, and Excel deletes unsaved copies after four days. Work done in the last few minutes before a crash is usually lost.

To avoid this next time. Set the AutoRecover interval to 2 or 3 minutes under File, Options, Save and keep the option to retain the last AutoRecovered version on close checked. Turning on AutoSave with a OneDrive location makes every change recoverable.