[5 Methods] How to Recover the Latest Version of A Word Document

Can I retrieve a previous version of a Word document?

When we handle some documents, MS Word may crash accidentally, then the current edited document will be lost. It is troublesome to lose a Word document, especially unsaved one. What's worse, the sudden crash may even cause Word document corruption. Fortunately, in the following content, we’ll share how to recover the latest version of a Word document.

How to recover the latest version of a Word document

Are you stuck on finding out the lost latest Word files? To recover the lost Word document, you can refer to this part, 4 methods will be shared to recover unsaved Word documents.

🌟 Method 1. Recover the latest Word document with a data recovery tool

If the mentioned methods cannot help you, how to recover the latest version of a Word document? Here, we suggest you choose a third-party tool to recover the latest version of a Word document.

In a user-friendly GUI, AOMEI Partition Assistant for Recovery can not only recover the latest version of Word document, but also restore other files without too many steps. Different from the built-in tool, you don’t need to mutually locate and restore the target files, since it can automatically scan and seek out the files you want to restore.

Besides, there’re other advantages you may be interested in:

✎ A user-friendly operating interface 
You can operate in a bright and clean interface, and you can follow the detailed steps provided to recover the latest version of a word document or even recover a Word document you didn't save.
✎ All-rounded data recovery service
It can recover all disappeared for various reasons, and deal with more than 1000 types of files from disk formatting, computer crash, virus attack, and more.. 
✎ Wide range of the compatibility
You can recover the lost data on many devices, including SD cards, USBs, HDDs, SSDs, etc on all Windows 11/10/8/7, and Windows Server systems.

Here are the steps on how to recover an unsaved Word document.

Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant for Recovery. Choose the exact partition or disk where your data lost and click Scan.

Step 2. Then, the recovery tool start to scan and search. lt will execute the “Quickly Scan" first for finding your deleted data fast, and then execute the “Deep Scan" for searching other lost data.

Step 3. Once the scan is completed, all deleted files, recycle bins and other missing files will be displayed. Please select the file you would like to recover and then click "Recover".

Step 4. Then, select a folder path to save your recovered files.

Step 5. Wait patiently for this process of recovering ends.

Method 2. Recover the previous Word document with AutoRecover

When you miss a word document by accident, you can try AutoRecover, it’s a built-in function on Microsoft Office. It will automatically store the current documents in a certain time, so you can recover the lost word document with it.

Step 1. Find the lost file’s saving path, then copy the file name of the lost Word document you decide to recover.

Step 2. Open Microsoft Word and click “File”. Click “Manage Document” and choose the “Recover Unsaved Documents” option on the drop-down list. Then paste the target file name and click “Open”.

Step 3. In the new window, you can mutually recover the latest version of the Word document. Click “File”, “Options” and “Save” in order, then tick “Save AutoRecover information every x minutes” and “Keep the last autosaved version if I close without saving”. Finally, click “OK”.

Method 3. Recover the latest Word document via MS Word history

If you use Microsoft 365 to create Word documents, you can also find the lost documents on Microsoft OneDrive, for the files can be stored on it. This method also helps recover overwritten files. Open the Version History, you can quickly access all the latest Word documents.

Note: If the Autosave function didn’t enable before, and the Word document haven’t stored on your OneDrive, or you cannot find the latest version of the Word document.

Step 1. Open the Word document and select “File” on the top-left side. Then click “Info” and “Version History” in turn.

Step 2. In the new interface, click “Version History” again, then choose the latest version and click “Open version”.

Step 3. View and check whether the selected version is that you want to recover, then click “Restore”.

Method 4. Recover the Word document through Properties

In Windows 10 PC, you can recover the latest version of the Word document via File Explorer. When you view the Properties of the target document, you can see the previous version of it. Let’s see how to retrieve the latest version of Word document.

Step 1. Locate the target Word document, then right-click it and choose “Properties”.

Step 2. In the new popped window, click “Previous Versions” and choose the version of a document you want to recover, then click “Restore”. If you just want to view this version, click “Open”.

Solution 5. Recover unsaved Word document with Document Recovery

When Microsoft Word crashes or shuts down unexpectedly, it typically recovers unsaved documents automatically upon restarting. These files are usually accessible in the left-hand panel under the "Document Recovery" section. If you want to retrieve latest version of Word document, you can try the Document Recovery.

Step 1. From the main tab of Excel, click the "File" button and select "Options". Under the "Options" menu, on the left-hand pane, pick "Save".

Step 2. As shown in the photo, check the state of the feature. Set the automatic save time based on your needs.

The same method can be used to recover an Excel file that was saved over if you enable the option and save the files once, Excel will display the lost files that can be recovered. You can now find and pick the target files, which will be opened in the software.

Verdict

It can be annoying when the previous version of Word document lose due to some uncontrolled reasons. But don’t be sad, we have shared some methods on how to recover the latest version of a Word document. By comparison, AOMEI Partition Assistant for Recovery can better recover lost files.