How to Recover a Deleted Word File

A Word document is missing from its folder. Check the places below in order; the first two catch most deletions, and the later ones cover files that were never saved or were emptied from the bin.

Check the Recycle Bin

Open Recycle Bin from the desktop. Type the file name in the search box at the top right. Right-click the file and choose Restore; it returns to its original folder. On a Mac, open Trash in the Dock, right-click the file, and choose Put Back.

Check the OneDrive recycle bin

If the folder syncs with OneDrive, sign in at onedrive.com, click Recycle bin in the left pane, select the file, and click Restore. Deleted files stay there for 30 days on personal accounts, and files emptied from the desktop Recycle Bin often still exist here.

Look in Word's own recovery lists

Open Word and go to File, Open, Recent. Scroll to the bottom and click Recover Unsaved Documents. This folder holds AutoRecover copies of documents that were closed without ever being saved; open one and use Save As right away. For a document that still opens but lost recent changes, go to File, Info, Manage Document to see autosaved earlier versions.

Restore a previous version of the folder

In File Explorer, right-click the folder that held the file and choose Properties, Previous Versions. Pick a date from before the deletion, click Open to browse it, and copy the file out. Versions appear only if File History or System Protection was on. On a Mac, open the folder, launch Time Machine, and step back to a date when the file existed.

Try Windows File Recovery

Install Windows File Recovery from the Microsoft Store. It runs in a terminal and must recover to a different drive than the one the file was on, for example from C: to D:

winfr C: D: /regular /n *.docx

Stop using the source drive until it finishes. Anything already overwritten on the disk cannot be recovered by any tool.

If none of these work. Check sent email attachments and any copy shared with someone else. A file deleted long ago on a busy drive is not coming back.

To avoid this next time. AutoRecover saves every 10 minutes by default (File, Options, Save). Store documents in OneDrive with AutoSave on; every version is then restorable from the cloud.