Have you ever found yourself in a panic after losing a Word document?
You certainly aren’t alone.
True story: while editing this very article you are reading – Word froze and crashed on me. Not once. Not twice. But three times in a row.
And even though I provide a strategy you can use to recover lost work below, it’s not full-proof. In fact, Word first froze up on me when I going to document this reality.
The tips below will help reduce the chances of you losing work in Microsoft Word greatly, but there’s never 100%.
So – as the title of this tip says: Save Early and Save Often. [I just hit save again]
Don’t believe me? Here’s my screen recording since this was just too ironic (don’t ya think?):
I’m not usually this paranoid and the majority of the times the AutoRecover features works great for me. After the occurrence repeating itself 3 times, I rebooted my computer.
For a decade I have said I custom order some coffee mugs that say:
“Never under-estimate the power of a restart.”
Ok, back to the main event. In today’s Stupid Simple Mac Tip, I’ll provide a few solutions to how to reduce your chances of losing data in Word and also how to recover Word documents quickly (though it’s not 100%).
Get your settings right:
By default, Microsoft Word autosaves your document every 10 minutes.
However, you can lose a good amount of work in ten minutes.
If your computer crashes for whatever reason, the most you will lose is up to the last minute of your work. Here’s how to set this up: [do this NOW, as you read it]
- Click on Word in the menu bar and go to Preferences
- Click on the Save icon.
- Change the settings to reflect what I have here:
- Check Always create a backup copy
- Check Allow background saves
- Check Save AutoRecover info [this IS on by default, but you want to change the number down to 1 minute]
I have to point out AutoSave and AutoRecover is different:
- AutoSave only works if you use OneDrive or SharePoint which a very small percentage of our Mac-using lawyer readers use.
- AutoRecover helps you to control the time to auto save your document.
Kinda stupid right? AutoRecover auto-saves for you, another great naming play by Microsoft