AutoRecovery Word Mac: How to Turn on AutoRecovery on MacBook Air/Pro

AutoRecovery Word Mac is a valuable feature of Office programs on MacBook Air, Pro, iMac, and Mac Studio. It supports file recovery in the condition that the Word application or macOS suddenly crashes and Microsoft error reports Mac lost documents.

How does AutoRecovery Word Mac work? It realizes background file backup by automatically saving files at set intervals. By default, AutoRecovery Word Mac saves a document every 10 minutes. However, you can set how frequently your AutoRecovery documents are saved in the background to avoid data loss due to sudden shutdown.

Note: Once you click "Save" or press "Command + S" to save your changes on the Word document, its previous AutoRecovery version will be removed. So it's hard to recover previous version of Word document Mac with the AutoRecovery Word feature.

How to Turn on AutoRecovery Word Mac

To protect your Word documents from losing changes after sudden application or system crashes, you should ensure your AutoReccoer Word feature is turning on. Check out the steps behind:

Step 1. Open the Word application on your Mac.

Step 2. Go to the menu of the Word application, click "AutoSave", and turn it on if it displays "OFF".

And you can change how frequently AutoRecovery Word files are saved by checking the steps below:

Step 1. Click "Preferences" in Word.

Step 2. Click "Save" to open the "Save AutoRecovery info" window.

Step 3. Set how frequently your AutoRecovery saves your documents.

Suppose the AutoRecovery feature is "OFF" on your MacBook, so you lost the unsaved Word Documents, don't worry! Apart from that, there are many ways to help you retrieve unsaved Word files, including using third-party file recovery software and recovering permanently deleted files Mac Terminal; you can refer to this article to solve your problem.

Where Is Autorecovery File Location on Mac

When your Mac shuts down automatically due to low battery or Word keeps crashing Mac and has to be restarted, you won't have time to save your files from the Word application. Don't worry. You can find the unsaved files in time in the AutoRecovery files location.

To find any AutoRecovery file on your Mac, check out the steps below:

Step 1. Open "Finder".

Step 2. Click "Go > Go to Folder". Or press "Shift + Command + G" and enter the folder path:

• The AutoRecovery file location is /Users/username/Library/Containers/com.Microsoft/Data/Library/Preferences/AutoRecovery using Office Word 2016/2019/2021 or Office 365.
• The AutoRecovery file location is /Users//Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/Office 2011 AutoRecovery using Office Word 2011.

In addition, the AutoRecovery Word Mac file location can be changed; check out the steps:

Step 1. Open the Word menu, and click "Preferences".

Step 2. Select "Personal Settings > File Locations".

Step 3. Click "AutoRecovery files" under "File Locations", and click "Modify".

Step 4. Select the location where you want to save the AutoRecovery files and click "Open".

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Use AutoRecovery Word Mac to Recover Unsaved Word Document

When you are working, many situations may arise that cause you to lose the changes you have made to your Word document.

• Restart your Mac without any chance to save the Word document
• Force quit on Mac when Word is frozen, so the document lost
• Accidentally pressed Don't Save on Word Mac when you quit the Word application

In most cases, when your system crashes or you suddenly quit the Word application, once you open the Word app again, it will automatically bring up the last saved progress document, and you can save it again manually.

Otherwise, you can return the unsaved Word document with the AutoRecovery feature on Word. Check out the following steps:

Step 1. Launch "Finder" and click "Go > Go to Folder".

Step 2. Enter the path /Users/username/Library/Containers/com.Microsoft/Data/Library/Preferences/AutoRecovery.

Step 3. Go to the AutoRecovery folder, and select the document you want to restore.

Step 4. Rename the document and change its file name extension to ".doc".

Step 5. Double-click the document to open it in the Word application, and click "Save as" to save it in a new folder.

In addition, using Mac file recovery software, Temp files, and restoring from Trash can also help you get back the unsaved Word documents. Read this article to learn more about the detailed steps.

AutoRecovery Word Mac: The Best Alternative

Using the AutoRecovery feature to recover unsaved documents is very simple and easy to understand, but there are drawbacks applicable to the premise that you enabled the AutoRecovery feature in the Word application.

Also, once you have saved or deleted a Word document by mistake, it is difficult to retrieve it using the AutoRecovery feature because once you have saved the document manually, the history of the AutoRecovery record will be removed. In this case, you can't recover your document from Trash either.

But the sky is the limit; you can still get back your Word documents with the best Text recovery converter alternative: EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac is a powerful and trusted file recovery tool that can recover permanently deleted files Mac.

The EaseUS Mac data recovery software supports the recovery of numerous file types, including images, videos, documents, audio, etc. It is particularly good at document recovery, including but not limited to the following repair scenarios:

• Support recovery of unsaved Word files
• Fix corrupted Excel file Mac
• Recover unsaved PowerPoint on Mac
• Recover unsaved Photoshop file Mac

You can follow the steps below to recover your unsaved and lost Word documents on Mac.

Note: You can create a backup by clicking the "Disk Backup" on the left first. When the disk is damaged or the unsaved document on the disk is accidentally deleted or lost, you can get the data back from the backup image.

Step 1. Select the disk

Launch EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac, hover the mouse over the device where you lost an unsaved file, and click "Search for lost files".

Step 2. Choose unsaved documents

After the scan, click "Type", and expand "Unsaved Documents". Click the exact file type - Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Keynote, Pages, or Numbers you lost without saving.

Step 3. Preview and recover unsaved files

Double-click to preview your unsaved file, select the right version and click "Recover" to save the file to another secure location on Mac.

Conclusion

AutoRecovery Word Mac is a valuable feature of Office programs on MacBook Air, Pro, iMac, and Mac Studio. You can recover unsaved Word documents using the AutoRecovery feature. If you disenable the AutoRecovery feature on the Word application, don't worry. EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac can help you recover unsaved Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents.

AutoRecovery Word Mac FAQs

Here are questions people frequently ask that are related to AutoRecovery Word Mac:

1. Is there a way to recover an unsaved Word document on Mac?

Yes, you can recover an unsaved Word document on Mac using the AutoRecovery feature. You should find the unsaved document in the AutoRecovery files folder, rename it and save it to a new location. Or you can use professional Word document recovery software EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac to recover your unsaved Word file.

2. Does my Mac has AutoRecovery?

If your Mac installed Microsoft Office 365 for 2023, MS Word 2021, 2019, 2016, and 2011 Mac versions, which offer the AutoRecovery feature to restore an unsaved Word document that was not saved, your Mac has AutoRecovery.

3. Where are the AutoRecovery files on Mac Word?

You can find the AutoRecovery files on Mac by following the steps:

Step 1. Launch "Finder" and click "Go > Go to Folder".

Step 2. Enter the path /Users/username/Library/Containers/com.Microsoft/Data/Library/Preferences/AutoRecovery.