How to recover Word document that was mistakenly replaced

Question

I worked on a Word document and also saved the file on my flash drive. When it asked me to save, I pressed the Replace document option by mistake.

I can see the missing work under the Properties menu. Will I be able to recover the lost work?

Solution 1

It depends on the Operating System. If you're running a newer version of Windows, right clicking the file will reveal "previous versions," and you should be able to roll back the document to that. If you had track changes enabled, you could always restore there too.

Solution 2

Another option might be to use file recovery, though it doesn't always work. You may try to use http://www.piriform.com/recuva from windows or testdisk from GNU/Linux or a LiveCD. Or simply google for "free file recovery" and you'll get a long list of programs designed to recover accidentaly deleted files. Since here you didn't delete but overwrite the file it may also not work, but since the file got overwrited by something very different it may also show up as another version in the recovery program. All lies whethever the overwrite process affects the same physical sectors as the original's file and / or how many traces it leaves there.

Otherwise nicatronTg's answer may be the best bet, though it seems to me that "previous versions" is not enabled by default.

Comments

[soandos]

What do you mean you can see it under properties?

[soandos]

@gry, since you posted the bounty, do you have any insight here?

[Admin]

@soandos Not really - all I can see is that the question is useful but wasn't given enough attention. Sadly I see that long after it was asked and the question poster is unresponsive.

[Sun]

Try here for some extra options. Don't feel like making an answer when Microsoft has written out all the options : [kb/316951](http:// support2.microsoft.com/kb/316951)

[Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007]

possible duplicate of Is there any way to restore/recover a file that was saved over to its last version?

[Gaurav Joseph]

Recuva is quite good used it a lot, but will recovery will depend on the factor of sectors being overwritten.