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Recover Excel Files: How to Get it Back After Crashing / Deleting!

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Let’s start with the bad news: The probability is high that your workbook is gone when you are reading these lines. But there are some steps you could try to recover it. It might be worth starting with the AutoRecover function and then – as long as unsuccessful – trying other steps.

Step 1: Check your AutoRecover file location

Excel has a built in autosave function. By default, it saves a copy every ten minutes. You can also configure it to save the last version if you close Excel without saving. Recovering an autosaved version is easy: Find the folder and copy the version you’d like to recover.

Steps for recovering an Excel workbook.

Don’t just check for exactly the correct filename. Also look for files with a correct save date and time (but maybe no extension, in such case add “.xlsx” to the end) or .xslb files.

Step 2: Check the folder, you’ve saved it in

It might be worth a try to check for a binary file in your folder.

Did Excel crash during the saving process? If yes, you might want to check the folder, where your file is saved in. For saving, Excel creates a file without extension and then renames it and replaces the original file. If there is a file in your folder with no extension and created at the time, when you tried to save your workbook, do the following: Add an extension “.xlsx” to the filename and try to open it. There is a small chance, that your latest version could be restored.

Step 3: Recover your workbook from other sources

Well, that’s it already for the more or less official ways to recover your data. But still, you could consider the following hints:

Did you delete your file? Try these steps.

For the future: Do these things now to prevent data loss

There are many things you can do right now for preventing data loss.

Maybe now is the right moment to think about how to prevent data loss. There are some things you can do right now.

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