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

56 answers

Sort by: Newest
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2024-11-27T16:04:03+00:00

    POTENTIAL FIX

    This just happened to me on a work computer - my file was saved on my work OneDrive and nowhere else. The computer installed an update overnight and this morning I had lost a months worth of changes though I know I use and save multiple times a day. Here's what I did:

    In the altered excel file: File -> Options -> Save (in left panel)

    I saw that my AutoRecover file location is set to C:\Users*Username*\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel - investigating this folder, I saw not one file related to the file I lost, so I looked to see if it was saved locally instead:

    C:\Users*Username*\AppData*Local*\Microsoft\Excel\TemporaryBackupFile

    and VOILA! Only one file in the folder and it was the last version of my file (last saved yesterday) labelled with today's date included before the file name. I just Saved As another version to my OneDrive AND my hard drive so I have more than one copy in case this happens again.

    I hope this helps if it happens to anyone else again!!

    Was this answer helpful?

    30+ people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  2. Deleted

    This answer has been deleted due to a violation of our Code of Conduct. The answer was manually reported or identified through automated detection before action was taken. Please refer to our Code of Conduct for more information.

    Comments have been turned off. Learn more

  3. Anonymous
    2024-11-25T03:16:28+00:00

    This is the standard first step, but not at all helpful here. OP and several commenters specifically said that they checked the version history and there was nothing in it. And other responders, who have read the post carefully, have already offered other additional solutions to try.

    Was this answer helpful?

    2 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  4. Anonymous
    2024-11-25T02:32:08+00:00

    For those who suddenly got their data cleared and saved it in the drive, recovery is not an option, you can recover your data by accessing the version history and recovering from the time of your last edit. I hope this works!

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  5. Anonymous
    2024-10-16T03:15:57+00:00

    POSSIBLE SOLUTION!
    I had something similar, although not exactly... Hopefully this will help someone...

    I was editing an Excel file that's saved on SharePoint on my desktop. Saved multiple times while editing. Next day I opened same file on Laptop, the version that I saw, was several hours behind. I didn't realize it at first and started editing the file and saving it.

    When I opened the file on the desktop again, it opened the version that was saved from the laptop and showed me the "Unsaved Changes" tab, with the message "Some of your unsaved changes can't be displayed here".

    I tried looking at the Version History and in "Recover Unsaved Workbooks", as suggested by MS support, but it wasn't there.

    Here's what worked:

    1. Click File -> History
    2. To the right of the History tab, there is a small panel with 3 icons. In the top right, click the icon "Unsaved Changes"
    3. At the bottom of the Unsaved Changes tab, there's a button "Open Backup" If you click it, it will pull the unsaved version.
    4. Save the doc with a different name and merge changes if needed manually.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments