Don’t Flip Out! You Can Recover Unsaved Documents

Most computer errors are no big deal, just hit the undo button, keep calm, and carry on. However, there is one mistake that is sure to panic even veteran PC users, and that is closing an important document without saving it. We've all done it, it is not a good feeling; we will show how to recover it.

More often than not, you will experience this loss while working on a Microsoft Office application. To recover a lost Word document, take a deep breath and then reopen Word. Go to File > Info > Manage Versions > Recover Unsaved Documents (you would look for Recover Unsaved Workbooks in Excel and Recover Unsaved Presentations in PowerPoint). Find the document from the list that looks like your project, select it, and Office will restore it to all of its former glory. Before you even think about doing anything else, go to File > Save As and then say a prayer of thanks to St. Isidore of Seville, the patron saint of computers and computer programmers.

Not every application is going to perform document recovery the same way as Microsoft Office. If the program you are using has an auto save option, then it is saving a copy of the file somewhere; most likely in the Temp file. You can also look for your lost file using Windows search. Just remember to not turn off your PC, many of the files that are auto saved are cleared out when the computer restarts.

For the longest time we have been taught to regularly hit Ctrl+S as if our lives depended on it. Hitting Ctrl+S is still a best practice, but for many cloud-based applications it is no longer required. This is because a variety of applications programmed to automatically save your project every 15 seconds or so. In fact, Google Docs and Microsoft Office 365 are two great cloud-based productivity apps that will automatically backup your work.

One of the nice features about the cloud is that you will be able to access your documents from any computer or mobile device in the event of a crash. One difficult thing about the cloud is that we appear to be computing at a time when more applications are migrating to the cloud, but there are still many PC functions not yet on the cloud. Just to be safe, saving your work at various intervals, regardless of whether it will autosave or not, is still the best practice to make sure that you don't loose your progress.

The newest versions of many applications are migrating over to the cloud. To ensure that you never lose a single document, you can make the decision to move your entire network over to the cloud using a backup and disaster recovery (BDR) solution. A BDR solution will automatically backup all the information, programs, and files on your network so you never have worry about a computer crash losing your unsaved data.

If you would like to learn more about backing up your work to the cloud using Google Docs and Microsoft Office 365, or you want to know more about how to back up your entire network with a BDR solution, then call Computerware at (703) 821-8200 and never again freak out about accidentally closing an unsaved project.