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
    2024-05-31T22:40:48+00:00

    Happened to me today, the file was saved on the computer. I tried looking for it by recovering unsaved versions, or show any hidden files - nothing. The whole day of work just disappeared. Usually Excel is always asking whether I want to save changes, but I dont think it did the last time.

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  2. 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.

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  3. Tamer Tug 53,885 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2024-06-21T18:29:42+00:00

    hi,

    Dear friend here i am leaving you a link to help to solve your issue,

    Carefully follow the steps shown in the link finally you will get your issue solved.

    Can you please inform me after you apply thge steps and finish your process?

    Hre is the link,

    https://www.easeus.com/file-recovery/recover-temporary-excel-files-in-windows-10.html

    Good luck

    Regards

    Tamsa13

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-07-12T03:03:51+00:00

    I lost a day's work today when this happened. I tried everything in this thread and IT support couldn't find it either. I thought it might have happened because the internet went out for a couple minutes and the autosave got interrupted. Then, tonight, the same thing happened to my wife on a file she worked on after the outage and that she actively saved and watched save before closing! Microsoft needs to fix this!

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