How to Recover Unsaved, Deleted or Overwritten Excel File on Windows 10, 11?

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Zoey Wen
April 13, 2023 Preview 323 Preview 0
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Most of us might have experienced one of these situations-leaving an Excel file unsaved when power off or clicking don’s save by mistake, accidentally deleting a vital Excel file, or overwriting a Excel file without saving the original copy. We all feel guilty of not taking proper actions when experiencing these situations, but luckily, we are still able to recover these Excel files.

By using a robust data recovery program or applying free strategies with the help of Windows system, we can recover an unsaved, permanently deleted, even replaced Excel files on Windows 10 and 11.

 

Recover Unsaved Excel File on Windows 10, 11

#1 Use AutoRecover

If you want to restore unsaved Excel files on Windows, it will be pretty overwhelming if you disable AutoSave and AutoRecover in your Excel app. But if you’ve never changed this default settings and AutoRecover is activated, the file recovery becomes quite simple.

There are 2 ways to restore unsaved Excel files via AutoRecover, checking the auto-save location or restoring within Excel app. 

Where are Excel AutoSave files stored on Windows 11 or 10? Here is the location: C:\Users\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office\UnsavedFiles, you just need to find the folder and open the unsaved Excel file to save or save as a new Excel file on your Windows.

How to Recover Unsaved Excel File on Windows via AutoRecover?

  1. Launch Microsoft Office Excel on your Windows 11 or 10.
  2. Go to File>Open>Recover Unsaved Workbooks.recover unsaved excel 01
  3. Find and open the unsaved Excel file, edit or save it as you like.recover unsaved excel 02

What if clicking Recover Unsaved Workbooks icon doesn’t work?

In the case that above process doesn’t work to restore your unsaved Excel files, you can open up the Info panel and browse recent unsaved files to recover it.

  1. Launch Microsoft Office Excel on your Windows.
  2. Go to File>Info>Manage Workbook>Recover Unsaved Workbooks.recover unsaved excel 03
  3. Browse all the unsaved files, open and restore the one that you left unsaved.

 

#2 Open Recent

If you cannot find unsaved Excel files in AutoRecover location, you are recommended to find and open your recent files, checking if your unsaved files are saved in a unspecified file name. Here are the steps:

  1. Launch Excel app on your Windows.
  2. Go to File>Home>Recent, open the Excel file to check if it is the one you want to restore and save. recover unsaved excel 04

 

#3 Recover from Temporary Folder

Temporarily files will be created to hold data for a while when a file is being processed or used, if you haven’t cleaned the temporary files on your Windows, you will still have a chance of restoring an unsaved Excel file in Windows temporary folder.

  1. Press Windows + R and enter %temp%, then press Enter.recover unsaved excel temp 01
  2. Search and open the unsaved Excel file to restore.recover unsaved excel temp 02

 

Recover (Permanently) Deleted Excel File on Windows 10, 11

Another issue is that you may delete an Excel file by mistake and want to restore later on. Don’t worry, we here sort out 2 practically useful methods to recover a temporarily or permanently deleted Excel files on Windows PC.

How to Recover Temporarily Deleted Excel Files on Windows?

If you moved an Excel file to recycle bin but didn’t take further actions for a permanent removal, this is your first option to recover a recently deleted Excel file: restore from Recycle bin.

  1. Open Recycle bin.
  2. Find and choose the deleted Excel files that you want to restore.
  3. Right click Restore to put back your Excel files.recover deleted excel recycle bin

 

How to Recover Permanently Deleted Excel Files on Windows?

Assuming you have emptied Recycle bin or permanently deleted the Excel files from your trash bin, even there are no backups of your files, the best step forward is to use a professional data recovery program. Cisdem Data Recovery is one of the highly-rated choice to recover and repair Microsoft Office documents, including Word, PowerPoint, Excel, but it does more.

It is designed to recover deleted, formatted and lost files on Windows and macOS, has an excellent support for nearly all file formats and hard drives. It also has the repair feature to fix damaged videos, photos even documents. Cisdem also features an advanced file search capability of filtering files quickly and accurately, so you can restore lost files pain-free. 

Main features of Cisdem Data Recovery

  • Recover temporarily and permanently deleted files
  • Support file recovery under different scenarios: power off, system crash, virus attack, human error, etc.
  • Restore files from both internal and external storage devices
  • Support 1000+ file formats: videos, audio, documents, photos, emails, archives, etc.
  • Repair corrupted videos, photos and documents
  • Support NAS and Linux recovery
  • Preview files before recovery
  • Scan and recover files fast

How to Recover Permanently Deleted Excel Files on Windows 10, 11?

  1. Download and install Cisdem Data Recovery on your Windows PC.
    Free Download Windows 11/10/8/7
  2. Choose PC Recovery, select the location where your Excel files are deleted and click Search for Lost Data.recover deleted excel 01
  3. Go to Type > Documents > XLSX or XSL, use the filter to search the deleted Excel files fast.recover deleted excel 02
  4. Also, you can preview the Excel files, if they are damaged, Cisdem will repair them.
  5. Select all the deleted Excel files and click Recover to get them back to your Windows.recover deleted excel 04

 

Recover Overwritten Excel File on Windows

Made a change to your Excel file that you didn’t like it but have saved it? Or just overwrite an Excel file unintentionally? Relax, you are in the right place, because we are here bringing you a guide to resolve your query of restoring overwritten Excel files under different scenarios.

#1 Recover Overwritten Excel from Previous Version

Like many other document processor, Microsoft Excel saves different versions of files too. You can browse the version history and select the wanted one to restore. Here are the steps:

  1. Launch Excel app on your Windows 10 or 11, open the Excel file you want to revert to a previous version.
  2. Go to File>Info>Version History.recover previous version 01
  3. Browse all previous versions and open the one you want to restore.restore previous version 02
  4. Save the Excel file.

 

#2 Recover Replaced Excel Files using Windows File History

File History is a backup and restore tool on Windows, it allows users to back up personal files and retrieve previous versions of files via snapshot review. If you have enabled File History to back up files, here are the steps to recover a replaced Excel file on Windows.

  1. Type Restore your files with File History in the Windows search box. recover from file history
  2. Check and preview all the versions of the Excel file you want to restore.
  3. Click Restore to recover a replaced Excel file.

 

#3 Recover Overwritten Excel Files using OneDrive Backup

For users who are using Excel online, for example Office 365 online, you may have stored your Excel files in OneDrive, in this case, you can recover an overwritten Excel file from OneDrive backup. Or you can login into your cloud storage account and find the previous versions of your Excel file manually, then download the file again to your Windows for recovery.

  1. Login into your online Excel account, open the Excel file you want to revert to a previous version.
  2. Click the down arrow icon and open Version History.restore from backup01
  3. Choose one of the previous versions and open your file, edit or save as you like.restore from backup 02

 

Conclusion

Actually, today’s operating systems introduce and build in reliable utilities to backup or restore files, if you have a backup, it will quite easy to recover an unsaved, deleted even overwritten Excel files. But if there is no backup for your files, you’d better search carefully on your Windows or use Cisdem Data Recovery to restore a lost or deleted Excel file. Before the recovery process, stop writing new files to your Windows drive, because your Excel files may be purged to make room for those new files.

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Zoey Wen

Zoey shows a great interest in what she does. Although not long with Cisdem, she has possessed a professional understanding of data recovery.

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