5 ways to recover lost files on your computer

A power outage while you’re typing an important document on your work computer, or a simple mistake when you get up for a coffee can be enough to lose all the information you’ve been working on for hours. In this context, file recovery is not always an easy task or sometimes an almost impossible task.

Big developer companies like Microsoft are aware of this problem and over the years they have improved their programs with some features capable of recovering files in a simpler and more intuitive way than before.

How to Recover Lost Files in Microsoft Word?

Find the original document in the computer. It is the first of the “tricks” to recover lost files publishes the Cinco Días. “Although you may not be able to get your latest additions, you may be able to access the original version of your document,” they explain. To do this, simply access the original document from the Windows search bar or, if you have a Mac, from the Spotlight icon in the top-right corner.

Check the fuse. Sometimes it is the text editor itself that saves a backup copy to avoid having to restore the lost files. With Microsoft Word, backup copies are usually saved with the extension .wbk, so you have to look in the computer itself for a file ending with those letters. And if you’re lucky, the program itself will offer to open the latest copy of the document when you launch it.

The recycle bin. The recycle bin is usually the last place documents are found before they are permanently deleted from the computer. So it’s a good place to try to recover the files, although sometimes this trick doesn’t work.

Automatic recovery. You can also use Task Manager (if you have Windows) to recover lost files. Just close all Word windows and reopen the application. After this task, you need to click on the “Document Recovery” tab and search from a list. For Mac users, the process is exactly the same.

temporary data. Finally, the Cinco Días article suggests comparing the dates of the temporary files with the last moment you edited the document. To find these files you have to search .tmp in your computer, although it is quite complicated to open them …