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
    2024-05-29T20:01:35+00:00

    This happened to my girlfriend today, and I scoured the internet looking for ways to restore the file she had been working on for two days. Here is what finally worked.

    Open the folder where your excel file disappeared from. In Windows Explorer, enable "view hidden items".

    Is there a .tmp file with a weird name in the same location where the file disappeared? If so:

    1. open Excel, go to "File"
    2. navigate to the folder where the .tmp file is. The .tmp file will not show up in the window.
    3. Change the file filter to "All files" (instead of "All Excel files") in the drop-down list on the bottom right corner of the file dialog. Now, the .tmp file should show up. Select it, and click "Open".
    4. Excel will throw all sorts of warnings at you, but ignore them and move forward. After a few heart-stopping seconds and progress bars, if you are lucky, your file will be rescued with all data intact.

    Best of luck.

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  2. 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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  3. 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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  4. Anonymous
    2024-02-09T00:13:08+00:00

    Make sure that the file you are working in is an .xls or .xlsx workbook file and not a .csv file. .csv files do not retain formatting.

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-02-05T10:54:07+00:00

    My only consolation was the fact that I had emailed a copy of mine to my boss. Maybe going forward, emailing yourself a copy? Like once a week or something? An updated version? I may do that going forward, but I shouldn’t have to do all of that extra work and neither should you.

    Hopefully, the Microsoft guy can tell us what’s going on and where it “may be” in the cloud so we can retrieve it.

    I would be really upset as well.

    Good Luck to you!

    Jen

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