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
    2024-04-14T16:50:12+00:00

    I thought I was hacked? And a bizarre hack it is - rolling back two VERY important excel docs to a couple weeks ago - losing two weeks of financial record keeping for my home and business . . . a fracking NIGHTMARE to recreate - my new life

    AND none of the solutions worked - as though I didn't save the document ever day for two weeks AND my recycle bin is empty???

    But reading this post thread makes me feel better. This is just another idiot-wind Microsoft mandatory update in which they/you "fix" things that weren't broken and break things that were working well.

    Bill Gates used "catch and kill" to buy off all his competitors and this is what we have left -

    I'm grateful that I was not hacked, but Microsoft is its own kind of hacker - fubaring our lives and then lying about it.

    With all the love in my heart,
    Condolences to all of you who lost weeks (months???) of work.

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  2. 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!!!!!!

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-04-17T16:11:53+00:00

    Same just happened to me. I lost a whole month's worth of work. Thank you very much, OneDrive! This is what I pay monthly for?!?!! To have my files lost?!?!?! I will be going back to Google. You really screwed me over, Microsoft, and I have no recourse!

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  4. 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

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-05-03T20:13:46+00:00

    It seems like several people have had this issue recently. Anyone found a way to recover anything? My spreadsheet just disappeared and there was no history of me working on it today at all. I tried to recover unsaved versions, looked at my trash, etc. And I have been editing it for 8 hours straight (and saving every 30 mins to hour).

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