We rely heavily on autosaves, yet huge chunks of progress and entire versions of documents can be lost when we don’t manually save our work. The good news is, this problem is so common that Microsoft has made it easy to recover unsaved Word documents.
Step 1. In MS Word, click the File Tab in the upper left.
Step 2. Click Manage Document and select Recover Unsaved Documents from the drop-down list.
Step 3. Check for your missing file/s in the dialog box. If it was a recent loss, it should appear.
Step 4. Open the recovered Word document and click the Save As button in the top banner.
Recovering Word Documents through Data Recovery Programs
If this method didn’t help you recover unsaved Word documents, your best bet is either backup software or data recovery software.
As always, the most secure and reliable way to recover data is with regular full image backups. Whether you use a Windows PC, a Mac, or a mobile device, having up-to-date backups ensure that you don’t lose your files – no matter what.
That said, if you didn’t have a backup plan in-place and active when you lost your Word document, you won’t have a backup to restore the file from.
Sources:
https://www.acronis.com/en-us/articles/recover-word-document/