Finding and using the temporary and auto save files
http://office-recovery.com/word.asp
The default auto save time for word documents is 10 minutes. You can control this time in Options under the "Save" tab. The auto save files are placed in one of the following two locations, which is where you should look to recover the data.
- "C:\ Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\Word".
- "C:\ Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Temp"
On Windows 7 and Vista, the locations will be
- "C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Word"
- "C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp"
If you are looking for files used by word, then the following file types should be looked for, where "xxxx" is a number.
- A word document file will look like ~wrdxxxx.tmp
- A temp document file will look like ~wrfxxxx.tmp
- An auto recovery file will look like ~wraxxxx.tmp
- An auto recovery file that is complete will have the extension of .wbk.
When you have found a file that looks like it might contain data, you may want to open it in notepad instead of trying to get Word to reassemble it. The easiest way to do this is to open Notepad from the start menu then drag and drop the file in to it. The file will then be opened so that you can view the contents.
If the document was open when the system failed (power failure or crash) then you could try just opening Word again (not the document, just Word itself from the start menu). Word will then try to recover the lost document.
