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Can I recover lost text from a Microsoft Word document?

I feel like a complete idiot, but I was trying to copy and paste about fifteen paragraphs of text from a Microsoft Word document to an email message, and somehow ended up cutting the text out of the document and then having my email program crash. The net result is that I've lost about a day's typing and really want to know if there's any way I can recover it?

Dave's Answer:

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You might not realize it, but Microsoft Word actually keeps somewhat of a history of your document in the file, even when it looks like there's nothing there and even when you have revision tracking turned off.

One way you can see that this is the case is by doing a "Save As..." on a document you've been editing for a while. You'll find that the new version of the file, the version that has all the archival data purged, is often dramatically smaller than the original. Sneaky, eh?

Now, the challenge is how to access that data.

What you need to do is enable document conversion on open. In Microsoft Office XP, that's done by creating a blank document (so you can get to the Options preference, otherwise it's grayed out), then selecting Tools --> Options and clicking on the General tab.

You'll see this:

Microsoft Word for Windows: Convert File On Open?

Select the Confirm conversion at Open option (it's right by the mouse cursor) and click "OK".

Now open up the file with the missing text and you'll be asked if you want to use a converter:

Microsoft Word for Windows: Confirm Conversion on Open

There are lots of choices, but I've highlighted the one you want: Recover Text from Any File. Click "OK" and you'll see lots of junk, typographical notations, and other miscellany. In the middle of it, however, you should be able to find all your missing text. When I deleted some text from my test file and did this procedure, here's what I saw:

Microsoft Word for Windows: Deleted Text

The text from "Dave Taylor says:" to the bottom of the page was all deleted from the file, then the file was saved to disk. Theoretically it should have vanished, but it's still there and I was able to recover it.

Hopefully this will get you back your missing prose!

Good luck.

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Categorized: Windows Help (Article 5995)
Tagged: document recovery, microsoft office, microsoft word
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Comments

When I write proposals, it's pretty often that MS Word will catch me in this kind of mistake. I'm glad to see this suggestion and will be pointing people here from my blog.

Posted by: Laura Ricci at March 3, 2006 5:18 PM

I read with interest your article #5995 - Can I recover lost text from a Microsoft Word document?

It doesn't work for me at all, when I follow your instructions and open a file the option to 'convert file' does not appear, just the document as it was when I last saved it. Maybe I didn't make any mistakes for it to convert...

However that's by the by..

I'm prompted to suggest, in case you havn't already, that although it's too late after the event any futurre problems of the type you were addressing would be solved more simply by using 'Clipmate' from Thornsoft.com
It keeps a copy of everything you cut or copy to the clipboard and makes it available in a simple for repasting at any future time (depending on the parameters the user sets for how long /how much stuff is saved).
I also use it as a database for addresses and all manner of other info I harvest from the web or wherever. (there is the facility to 'file' clips into any number of folders, which can be set to save indefinitely).

There are lots of other amazing neat things it can to - thornsoft.com has a good guide - but the relevant killer is that you can even use it as a simple word processor to create and edit text files which are automatically written to disk as you go, so even a computer crash mid-sentence will not result in ANY loss of typed data. You just re-boot, open clipmate and there in it's latest entry is all the stuff you wrote.

Just a thought that you might like to explore the benefits of Clipmate. If you do and like it think of this as my cappuchino to you.

Posted by: Stuart Holmes at March 5, 2006 7:36 AM

hi there ..
thanks alot 4 this lesson ,
but i have a problem that when i open up the file with the missing text and there wasn't any box to ask me if i want to use a converter like the picture u show us !
how can i make it appear ?
and i did as u said :
Select the Confirm conversion at Open option (it's right by the mouse cursor) and click "OK".

HELP ME PLZZZZZZZZZ I NEED MY WORD FILE BACK ..
:"(

Posted by: nourah at May 10, 2007 4:35 AM

My parents just got a new computer and somehow when my mom (bless her poor non-techie heart) was working in Word she managed to make the entire Edit menu disappear. Any advice on how to get it back would be much appreciated!

Posted by: Lizzie at May 13, 2007 9:48 PM

To make it work, you need to save your damaged file as a different format like Word 97 RTF, then open it again and save it back to normal doc.

Posted by: Tommy Nator at July 12, 2007 7:20 AM

I was deleting some unused programs and deleted Windows 2000, I didn't think I needed it, had not been used since 2003, I have been using Windows XP, and now Excel and Word are gone, what do I do?

Posted by: Jenny at August 12, 2007 10:01 PM

I have a lot to say, but ...

I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!