If Word crashed, was force-quit, or the machine rebooted with a document open, the text is often still on disk. Word writes copies to three different places, and which one has your content depends on how far the crash was from your last save.

Search them in this order. Do it before reopening Word, because opening a new document can overwrite the most useful folder.

1. Word’s own recovery pane

Reopen Word. On the left of the start screen there is usually a Recover Unsaved Documents link at the bottom of the recent files list.

That link opens this folder:

%AppData%\Microsoft\Word\UnsavedFiles\

Files here are .asd (AutoRecovery save). To use one: copy it somewhere safe first, then open it with File → Open → Browse and select All Files in the type dropdown — otherwise Word hides .asd files from you.

2. The AutoRecover folder

%AppData%\Microsoft\Word\

Look for .asd files, and also .wbk (backup copies, one version behind your last save). Sort by modified date and match it against the time of the crash.

If the folder is empty, AutoRecover may be turned off. Check File → Options → Save — “Save AutoRecover information every N minutes” should be on, and the path is shown right there.

3. Windows temp files

Word writes a working copy while you type. These look like ~WRL0003.tmp or ~$document.docx:

%Temp%
%LocalAppData%\Temp\

Search the folder for ~WRL*.tmp and sort by date. Rename a copy to .doc (or .docx if it is large) and try opening it. These are by far the least reliable source — Word deletes them on a clean exit — but after a hard crash they are sometimes all that is left.

Note that ~$document.docx files are lock files, not copies. They contain the name of the user who had the document open, not the document. Do not waste time on them.

4. OneDrive or SharePoint version history

If the document was ever saved and lives in a synced folder, version history is the best answer available:

  • OneDrive web → right-click the file → Version history.
  • In Word: File → Info → Version History.

Every saved version is there, timestamped. You lose only the typing since the last autosave, which is a far better outcome than reconstructing from memory.

5. The “Open and Repair” fallback for a half-written file

If you found an .asd or temp file that Word refuses to open (“file appears to be corrupt”), it was likely cut off mid-write. Two things help:

  • File → Open → Open and Repair on a copy of it.
  • Insert → Object → Create from File into a blank document — this often imports the text when a direct open fails.

What to do differently next time

Three settings, five minutes, and this never happens again:

  1. AutoRecover every 2 minutes, not the default 10.
  2. Save to OneDrive or SharePoint rather than a local folder, so version history exists.
  3. Ctrl+S before any large paste or paste-special operation. Word’s most common crash point is re-paginating after a big paste.

If the document is a form or template you rewrite often, keep the last good version in a separate folder. Ten seconds of housekeeping beats an hour of recovery.

FAQ

I have already reopened Word and started a new document. Is it too late?

Not necessarily. Reopening Word can clear the UnsavedFiles folder, but the temp copies in %Temp% usually survive until Word exits cleanly again. Close Word fully first, then search %Temp% for files modified around the time of the crash. Do not reopen the document until you have copied anything promising somewhere else.

Does this work if the document was never saved even once?

Partly. With no save at all there is no .asd file, because AutoRecover writes relative to an existing document. What remains are the temporary working files (~WRL*.tmp), which hold the text but not the structure. Expect to recover the words and rebuild the formatting by hand.

The file was on a network drive and the connection dropped.

Ask the server admin whether volume shadow copies or an earlier backup exist — for shared drives that is usually a better answer than any local recovery. Locally, the same %Temp% search applies, because Word writes the working copy to the local disk even when the document lives on the network.

If the recovered file will not open, that is a different problem: the corruption guide covers it, or an engineer can rebuild it from the partial file.

Found the file but nothing opens it? Send the `.asd` or `.tmp` file — the raw one, not a re-saved copy — to help@easyofficefix.com. Partial files are often recoverable up to the truncation point, and you will get an honest assessment before paying anything.