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

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-01-15T02:56:26+00:00

    Hello dear support,

    I have windows 10 OS, I did follow all the 4 steps, mentioned above. My spread sheet was not there. The recycle bin was empty.

    Where is my spread sheet?

    Several days work was in it.

    I know I saved it at 2:30 PM PST, on 1/14/24, today, but all the spread sheets files disappeared, and closed after I left my system to go grab a glass of water from kitchen, and I know I had saved it before the files were automatically closed. Once I was back, all 5-6 spread sheets were all closed.

    How can I get that back?

    Sam Abdollahi 425-229-8774 email ******@hotmail.com . Please reply to another email . ******@gmail.com

    Thank you

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-01-17T03:45:07+00:00

    Good evening!

    I had this same exact thing happen to me today! No previous versions available, nothing in the recycle bin. The only thing that ended up saving me was the fact that I had sent my boss a copy of my log, and I could restore it from there. Are you updating Microsoft products right now? Because I’ve never had so much trouble with these applications before. I’ve restarted my computer, logged out and back in and still it’s been giving me problems. Please help.

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-02-02T00:28:43+00:00

    SAME HERE!! Happened just now

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-02-04T14:38:41+00:00

    SAME HERE!! Happened just now

    Same happened to me. I have lost three years of data that were stored on MS Onedrive. I opened the file this morning and data stored in this file over three years are no longer there. I accessed this file a few days ago and now am am completely lost at sea and without a compass. I have already tried all the steps previously mentioned but without any success.

    The idea to use a paid cloud facility was not to have this issue, now it seems that this is not the case.

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-02-05T10:30:55+00:00

    Oh no!! Are you able to find other versions when you click on the drop down above the toolbar? At all?

    I’m so sorry that this happened to both of you!

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