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I Just Closed an Unsaved Workbook

October 27, 2021 - by

I Just Closed an Unsaved Workbook

Problem: I had 20 budget files open and I used the previous trick to close all workbooks. I used shift-click on Don’t Save to close all without saving. But then I realized that I also had another file opened that I needed to save.

Strategy: You might be able to recover that file. You have to meet all of these criteria:

  • You have to be using Excel 2010 or newer
  • The file has to be old enough to have been AutoSaved
  • The file must never have been saved (i.e. it is still called Book7 or something like that.

When you realize that you closed Excel and did not save the workbook, follow these steps:

  • 1. Open Excel.

  • 2. Open the File menu and go to the Recent Documents.

  • 3. At the bottom of the right panel, use the Open Recent Documents icon.

The Recover Unsaved Workbooks icon is at the bottom of the File, Open list.
Figure 135. Find this at the bottom of Recent Places.

Gotcha: The Recover Unsaved Workbooks feature only handles the workbooks that had never been saved.

As a test, I just closed the workbook from the next topic without saving. When I look at the unsaved documents, I have four books from the last week. None of them are the workbook from 2:10 PM on May 25.

The UnsavedFiles folder shows a list of all files created in the last five days that were not saved.
Figure 136. Microsoft saved four workbooks that I didn’t think were important.

Here’s why: the workbook had been saved previously with a real file name. It will not appear in this list. But, you still have hope!

When you are editing a workbook that has previously been saved, Excel will perform an AutoSave every ten minutes. (Note: the AutoSave only happens if you’ve been making changes. If you leave a workbook open while you go to lunch for an hour, Excel will not waste five AutoSaves when there has been no activity.) Excel normally keeps the last five AutoSaved versions. When you close a workbook and decline to save the file, Excel will keep the most recent AutoSave file.

Open the workbook. You will see your changes are gone. Before you start making changes to the file, go to File, Info, Manage Versions. The unsaved version of that file could be available there.

Go to File, Info, Manage Versions to see the last AutoRecover version from the previous session.
Figure 137. This is good…the unsaved version is still available.

You should click on the unsaved version to open it in read-only mode. The message bar will tell you that it is a temporary version.

This is a Recovered Unsaved File that is temporarily stored on your computer. Click the Restore button.
Figure 138. Examine the workbook to make sure it is better than the last saved version.

If this workbook is the one you want to keep, click Restore. After you confirm, the workbook will overwrite the saved version.

This article is an excerpt from Power Excel With MrExcel

Title photo by Kat Love on Unsplash