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cindyjj

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 29, 2014
115
1
I was sorting a bunch of miscellaneous comments from word documents into one document. The one document had been titled and saved after one comment was put in it. Then I spent an hour cut and pasting paragraphs from other documents into that document. Then I was closing a bunch of other documents and when I got to this one, I clicked "don't save" instead of "save" by mistake. So the document saved without all of the added data. Is there any way to retrieve the document as it was before I clicked "don't save" after closing it?
 
Only if you checked off "Always make a backup" from Word preferences, Save. Otherwise the data is lost.

By default, Word automatically saves copies of modified documents every 10 minutes. If you close a modified document and choose not to save your changes, Word will delete the copy; however, it may be possible to recover a deleted copy using software such as Data Rescue.

Word saves the copies in the folder ~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/Office 2011 AutoRecovery (where the tilde represents the path to your home folder).
 
If I check that box, how often does it create back up copies? In other words, had I had that box checked, how much data would have been saved?
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By default, Word automatically saves copies of modified documents every 10 minutes. If you close a modified document and choose not to save your changes, Word will delete the copy; however, it may be possible to recover a deleted copy using software such as Data Rescue.

Word saves the copies in the folder ~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/Office 2011 AutoRecovery (where the tilde represents the path to your home folder).

I'm not finding that path when I put it in search nor in my Home folder.
 
The following are some more detailed instructions:

  1. In Finder, open the Go submenu on the menubar (situated at the top of the screen).
  2. Without closing the submenu, hold down the option key on your keyboard. An item labelled "Library" will be added to the submenu.
  3. Choose the item Library.
 
You can also make all hidden files visible "forever" with this Terminal command:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE; killall Finder

If you want to hide them again just replace TRUE with FALSE.
 
"If I check that box, how often does it create back up copies? In other words, had I had that box checked, how much data would have been saved?"

Auto recovery and auto save in Office 2011 is unreliable and seldom works. What you are experiencing has been reported over and over in the MS Office forums. That's why we advise Office users to always select make a backup. If you had done that, the last version (change) of your document would have been saved.
 
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