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:

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

When I deleted some text from my test file and did this procedure, here’s what I saw:

Hopefully this will get you back your missing prose!

Good luck.

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