Lost several day's worth of work in an Excel file?

Anonymous
2023-09-11T07:06:01+00:00

I opened, edited and saved a file in Excel several times last week without issue. This included adding a new sheet, then editing it over several days.

The file is in my work account's OneDrive.

Today I opened that same file to find that all my recent work (the whole sheet) has vanished; it seems to now be a version from 2 months ago, according to the last saved date. So naturally there is nothing in version history, and I cannot find any way to check for unsaved recent changes, but in any case, it was saved and opened again several times last week without issue, so I wouldn't expect unsaved recent changes to contain anything except perhaps the most recent edit.

How is this even possible!! Is there any way to recover the many hours of work I have lost?

My device is Windows 11, I have a personal account and a work account on the machine (and I have checked; it wasn't saved in my personal OneDrive).

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | Other | Windows

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments No comments

56 answers

Sort by: Most helpful
  1. Anonymous
    2024-06-19T18:14:48+00:00

    OneDrive is useless and a waste of money. I've tried everything in this thread and nothing worked. It's such a diverse problem too with many different variations of the same problem. Some people lost hours, some weeks, others like me MONTHS! Microsoft needs to fix their sub-par programs if they expect us to pay a subscription for it. If you're reading this thread, don't use OneDrive for you file security and your own sanity.

    Was this answer helpful?

    5 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments No comments
  2. Anonymous
    2024-04-30T09:54:45+00:00

    The same happened to me this morning. I was lucky to loose 'only' a few hours work but an extensive one. I've been saving my progress throughout editing the spreadsheet. I have moved one sheet out of my main sheet to see all the info next to each other, linking the date within the sheets. The system notified me if I am sure I want to save the main file with references to unsaved document. I did, saved and when i finished, I moved the unsaved sheet back into the main one. Saved, copied the sheet, created a new one, starting renaming the new one and then it crashed.

    Nothing in onedrive, bin, temp files, unsaved etc. All lost

    Was this answer helpful?

    5 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments No comments
  3. Anonymous
    2024-04-15T05:45:18+00:00

    This exact same thing happened to me many times even when I save my work. i am so tired of trying. I don't know what is going on - i used to love excel now i despise it!!!!!!

    Was this answer helpful?

    4 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments No comments
  4. Anonymous
    2024-03-18T23:56:33+00:00

    I just had the same problem but i just happened to find it after an hour of panic! None of the methods mentioned helped me either. This may or may no be your fix or discovery. But my desktop has 2 accounts set up on it. One for work and one for personal. That means I also have 2 OneDrives. Well apparently, the only thing i can figure is that i orignally save my changes in my work One Drive, and somewhere along the line my last changes were saved in my personal under the Same Document title. The older one seemed to take precedence over the newest. My newest didn't even show up until my PC did an automatic sync as it must have been online only (not sure). But when i tried to open, a dialog box came up saying i have another version with the same name already open. I had to complete close out the work one before it allowed me to open the one i was missing......and ..Wah-lah !!! There it was. This a g;itch in MS for sure. I hope this helped someone

    Was this answer helpful?

    4 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments No comments
  5. Anonymous
    2024-03-18T22:15:48+00:00

    Hello. I lost a file too :(

    Was this answer helpful?

    4 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments No comments