If you have lost an unsaved Excel, you can restore it from Excel temporary files. This page will show you where are temporary excel files stored in Windows 10 and guide you to recover the temp files for Excel 2016, 2013, and 2010. What's more, a professional file recovery software is recommended to help you recover deleted or lost Excel document at a high recovery rate.
| Workable Solutions | Step-by-step Troubleshooting |
|---|---|
| Recover Temporary Files in Excel | Step1: Click 'File' > 'Open' > 'Recent' in Excel Step2: Click 'Recover Unsaved Workbooks' Step3: Select and Open the unsaved Excel...Full steps |
Open Terminal and in the window, type “open $TMPDIR” and hit “Enter”. Then it opens Temporary files folder. Select the folder named ‘’Temporaryitems’’. Under ‘’Temporaryitems” and the unsaved Excel file will be named begin with ‘Excel Work File’.
Why can't I restore workbooks from the Excel temp folder immediately?
'Hi, I want to know how I can recover temporary Excel files in Windows 10? It's a disaster for not saving workbook you had put a lot of painful work into. I've searched all over the computer, literally found nothing but a folder containing many files named as ~xxx.tmp. I felt so excited and thought that might be the temporary copy of the lost file. To my disappointment, it's nothing but useless garbage with several bytes. What should I do? If I can't recover XLS file from the temp folder, is there another way to do it?'
The Word for Mac saves a copy of the unsaved document named as Word Work File in the Temporary folder. Your Mac also temporarily keep files in this folder. Though for many Mac users, it's not easy to find it. Guide: How to recover an unsaved Word document on Mac. The Office Document Cache contains the files Office uses to make sure your changes are saved in the cloud. Sometimes when you use Office with other apps in the cloud, the apps fail to sync properly before you close Office and this can damage, or corrupt, your Office Document Cache. Usually, Office can repair damaged cache files.
Microsoft Office offers the AutoRecover tool in 2016/2013/2010 to save your working Excel document automatically. When you lose the unsaved Excel files suddenly due to a power failure, system crash or misoperation, you can recover data from the temporary files created by Office. The AutoSave and AutoRecover may have different names in different Office versions, but they all have the same function.
Where Are Temporary Excel Files Stored in Windows 10
Microsoft Office's AutoRecover feature will save the Excel file, Word document, etc. files into a temporary folder in Windows PC every a few minutes. The only thing that you need to do is to turn on the AutoRecover feature in Office Excel or Word, PPT apps.
Office 2016 For Mac Support
Excel will automatically save the working files every XX minutes (you can set the interval time as you like) to the default location.
Windows 10: C:UsersAppDataLocalMicrosoftOfficeUnsavedFiles
Windows 8/ 7/Vista: C:UsersUserNameAppDataLocalMicrosoftOfficeUnsavedFiles
Windows XP: C:Documents and SettingsUserNameLocal SettingsApplication DataMicrosoftOfficeUnsavedFiles
How to Recover Temporary Files in Excel 2016/2013/2010
In Office 2010 and the higher version, recovering Excel temp files is quite easy by using the Recover unsaved workbooks feature. Except for this way, you still have other solutions to recover unsaved Excel file on Windows 10, link to see details.
As said before, you can go to the following path to find the Excel temporary file:
C:Users[username]AppDataLocalMicrosoftOfficeUnsavedFiles
Or you can make it with the guides below.
1. Open Excel, and click 'File' > 'Open' > 'Recent' > 'Recover Unsaved Workbooks' in the bottom left corner.
2. Select the unsaved file and click the 'Open' button. Then, on the pop-up window, choose 'Save As' to recover it.
If you also meet the Word document missing problem when working with Microsoft Office and find no way out, you can read how to recover unsaved document in Windows 10.
Bonus Tip. How to Recover Lost/Deleted Excel Files with Data Recovery Software
The above solutions only work for getting back the unsaved Excel document through the temp files. What if you have lost some saved Excel files due to accidental deletion, storage device formatting, system corruption, or virus attack? If you happen to encounter such a problem, don't fret, you have EaseUS hard drive recovery software to help you. This versatile data recovery software is famous for recovering deleted files at very high recovery rate in the easiest way. The supported document file formats are: DOC/DOCX, XLS/XLSX, PPT/PPTX, PDF, CWK, HTML/HTM, INDD, EPS, etc.
Now, download and try this reputable data recovery wizard to recover your lost Excel document within three simple steps. It won't let you down.
Office 2016 For Mac Updates
Step 1. Specify a location.
Run EaseUS Data Recovery Software. Choose the drive X: or perhaps a specific folder on Desktop or somewhere else where you lost the excel files, and then click 'Scan'.
Step 2. Scan for data.
During the scan, you'll see more and more data showing up very quickly in the 'Deleted files' result. That's part of what the software has found and displayed. To quickly find the Excel files in the massive data in the scan results, click on the 'Filter' on the top area and choose 'Documents'. Or, search .xls or .xlsx in the Search box.
Step 3. Preview and recover.
Office 2016 Mac Temporary Files Recovery
You can double click on a file to preview its integrity. Finally, select the desired files and click 'Recover'.