Recover an Unsaved or Overwritten Excel File

There are two completely different Excel disasters, and people treat them as one. Mixing them up wastes the few hours in which recovery is still possible.

Disaster one: you built a workbook, Excel closed, and the file never had a name. Nothing was ever written to a location you chose.

Disaster two: the file exists and always did — but you pasted over a column, deleted a sheet, or let a colleague’s copy overwrite yours, and then saved. The file is fine. The data inside it is wrong.

The first needs AutoRecover. The second needs version history. Work out which one you have before you start clicking.

Disaster one — the workbook was never saved

Excel writes periodic drafts of unsaved workbooks whether you asked it to or not. They live in a folder Excel does not advertise.

1. Open Excel.
2. Go to File → Open.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the recent workbooks list and click Recover Unsaved Workbooks.

Alternatively, with any workbook open, use File → Info → Manage Workbook → Recover Unsaved Workbooks. Same folder, different door.

That opens this location directly:

%AppData%\Microsoft\Excel\UnsavedFiles

Filenames are useless here — expect Book1 or a long random string, usually with an .xlsb or .xlsx extension. Sort by Date modified and start with the newest.

Save it under a real name the moment you find it. Opening a recovery draft does not make it permanent, and the folder is purged automatically after four days.

If Excel crashed rather than closed

A crash triggers a different path. Reopen Excel and the Document Recovery pane should appear down the left, listing rescued files with timestamps. Click each to preview, then Save As.

That pane appears once. If you closed it, go to the AutoRecover folder manually:

%AppData%\Microsoft\Excel

Look for .xlsb files and anything with a recent timestamp. In Excel’s File → Open → Browse dialog, change the file-type dropdown in the bottom right to All Files, or the recovery files will not be listed.

The same logic applies to Word documents — the folder structure is identical, just under \Word instead. Our unsaved Word document guide covers the Word side in detail.

Disaster two — you saved over good data

This is the case AutoRecover cannot touch. The file on disk is exactly what you saved. There is no crash copy, because there was no crash.

What you need is an earlier version of that same file.

If the file is in OneDrive or SharePoint

You are in good shape. Every save creates a version, automatically, with no setup required.

1. Find the file in File Explorer under your OneDrive folder, or open OneDrive in a browser.
2. Right-click the file and choose Version history.
3. Versions are listed newest first with timestamps and who saved them.
4. Preview a version, then Restore it — or use Download to keep both.

Inside Excel, the same list appears under File → Info → Version History.

A tip that saves arguments: restore to a copy where possible. Download the old version with a new filename rather than overwriting the current one, so you can compare the two before committing.

If the file is on a local drive

Here the honest answer is that it depends entirely on what was switched on before the mistake.

• Previous Versions tab. Right-click the file, choose Properties, then the Previous Versions tab. This is populated by File History or restore points. If both are off, the tab will be empty — that is not a bug, there is simply nothing stored.
• File History. If it was enabled, open File History from the Start menu and browse backwards through snapshots of the folder.
• Backup software or a network share. Business machines often have nightly backups you can request from IT. Ask before trying anything clever.

If none of those were running, the earlier contents are generally gone. Disk recovery tools look for deleted files, and an overwritten file was not deleted — its blocks were rewritten in place. That is a real limitation, not a matter of buying better software.

The broader approach to this problem is covered in get back an older version of a file you saved over.

Quick comparison

What not to do

• Do not keep working in the damaged file. Every additional save in a OneDrive file pushes the good version further down the history list, and history is not infinite.
• Do not close Excel to “start fresh” after a crash. Reopening is what triggers the recovery pane. Closing and reopening repeatedly can dismiss it.
• Do not save a new file over the same name and path. You will destroy the thing you are trying to rescue.
• Do not restart or run a cleanup tool. Temp and AutoRecover files are exactly what cleanup utilities delete.
• Do not trust AutoSave as a safety net. AutoSave means your deletion was saved instantly and faithfully. It protects against crashes, not against you.

Set this up so it cannot happen again

Open File → Options → Save in Excel and configure three things.

Then two habits that matter more than any setting:

• Store working files in OneDrive or SharePoint. Not for the cloud — for the version history. It is the only protection against overwriting that works without you remembering to do anything.
• Press Ctrl+S in the first minute. An unnamed workbook is the hardest thing to recover. Once it has a name and a location, almost everything above becomes possible.

For genuinely critical workbooks, add a third layer: before a major restructure, use File → Save a Copy and append the date. Thirty seconds of effort buys a guaranteed rollback point that does not depend on any service being configured correctly.