Microsoft has finally set up Word, Excel and Powerpoint the same way, so they save your work continuously. Now that you think about it, you’re feeling a bit superior, aren’t you? Stop it. In fact, you’ve forgotten about that problem because Google Docs automatically saves everything continuously. That has never happened to you if you use Google Docs. Csikszentmihalyi would approve.Have you ever lost hours of work in a Word document because you closed it without saving? Of course you have. When crashes happen, 2 minutes of re-writing will be sub-optimal, but will hopefully fail to break your creative flow. This way, when future incidents occur, the most you can possibly lose is 2 minutes of work. I recommend setting the Save autorecover information every value to 2 minutes. You can make the duration between autosaves as small as 1 minute, but when working on long and complex documents (e.g., a dissertation or scholarly article) sometimes the autosave process itself can disrupt your flow, especially on older, slower computers. In the Save options section (from Step 2 above), reduce the duration between autosaves. Voila! Your document is back, and at most you've only lost the last 10 minutes of work.

asd file until you find the one that contains your missing work. If no file in the directory has the expected file name, open each. asd file may not even have an intelligible filename (e.g., '~prj383.asd'). If the document was new and never saved, the filename will be something like 'Autorecovery save of Document1.asd.' If the document was already manually saved, but you lost intervening work between saves, it will have the name of the saved document (e.g., 'Autorecovery save of Rob's Grocery List.asd'). At this point, you should see one (or more) files with the extension. In the file type dropdown list, select All Files (*.*). Step 3: Open the appropriate autorecovery file Place your cursor in the File name box and press CTRL+V to paste the path to the autorecover file location. Open Microsoft Word, and select File | Open. Step 2: Navigate to the autorecover file location from within Word In the Save options section, highlight the path in the Autorecover file location box and press CTRL+C to copy the path. (In Office 2007, click on the Office Orb, then Options.) In the left-hand column, select Save. In Office 2010, click on File | Options to bring up the Word Options dialog box. Step 1: Locate the Word autorecover file location Thankfully, if autosave is active (and it is, unless you manually turned it off), your work is probably not lost. When opening Word after a failure, you may have seen the Document Recovery window appear, offering to open the last autosaved version of your document.ĭocument Recovery has saved me countless hours of lost work over the years, but sometimes Word doesn't realize that a crash has occurred, or something else prevents Document Recovery from opening automatically. Fortunately, modern versions of Microsoft Word contain features to minimize lost work when crashes happen. When writing, nothing breaks Csikszentmihalyi-style flow more quickly or completely than losing work to a BSOD or unexpected power outage.

Turn on autosave for ms word on mac