Word Document Not Saving On Mac

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Since you can open up new Word files that says you don't have a 32 bit Word app.To start, there are a couple of things to try. I would restart your Mac in the safe mode. As it is starting up. Hold down the shift key. Start up can take up to 10 minutes as the os is doing fixing, cleaning and maintenance.

If you are working on a Word document on mac and the file is somehow closed without saving, here are some detailed instructions you can follow to recover unsaved Word doc on mac.

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Last Updated on December 8, 2020 by Ian McEwan

Losing your Word doc can be stressful, especially if you have spent hours working on it and the deadline is approaching. Luckily, in this article, you can recover your unsaved Word document on mac in 5 different ways depending on the situation you encounter.

Different Situations and corresponding solutions

After resetting the Word preferences, restart the applications and check if it fixes MS Word crashing on Mac or not. Save the Word Document to another Location. Apart from the MS Word application, there could be a problem with Mac storage. Word Macro-Enabled Template (.dotm) Saves the document as an XML-based template that preserves VBA macro code. VBA macros run in Word 2016 for Mac and Word for Mac 2011, but they do not run in Word 2008. Word XML Document (.xml) Exports document content to an XML file. Converts all formatting and text instructions into XML.

SituationMethods to recover Unsaved Word doc on mac
Power outage/ Human Error/ System Crash#1.Recover/ Retrieve Unsaved Word Document Mac From The Temporally Folder
Unsaved Word doc got lost/deleted somehow#4. Unsaved Word Recovery on Mac with Aiseesoft Mac Data Recovery
Unsaved Word document was corrupted/damaged in this accident

“This situation typically happens when your Word Doc is stored on a USB drive or other external memory device that is not Safely Removed while the Word document is open in Windows.”

#5. Repair Corrupt Word Documents and Restores unsaved Formatting with Stellar Repair for Word


#1. Recover/ Retrieve Unsaved Word Document Mac From the Temporally Folder

The Microsoft Word application saves a copy of your work just in case you close the document without saving. The copy might be saved in the temporary folder on your Mac. In case of unexpected shutdown or crush your unsaved document may be kept in this folder. If this is the case then here are the steps you need to follow.

  1. On your Mac, go to “applications” then click on “Utilities” and then open the “Terminal”
  2. Once you have opened the terminal type in open $TMPDIR.
  3. Press the enter key and a TMP folder will open. The TMP folder is used to store temporally files.
  4. Once you in the TMP folder, look for the “Temporary Items” folder and click on it to open.
  5. Here you will look for your lost document. If you find it, right-click on it and select the “open with” option.
  6. Open the file using the Microsoft Word application. Head to “file” and select “save as”. You can now save your document in your desired location.

#2. Find Unsaved Word Document from the Recovered Items Folder on Mac

The Microsoft Word application saves documents that you are still working on in the recovered items folder. This folder is located in the Trash of your PC. When you accidentally close your work without saving, you can look for it in this folder. The chances of retrieving the entire Word document are little, but you can recover a huge percentage of your work. Here are the steps you need to follow.

  1. On your Mac, go to “Trash.”
  2. Look for the “recovered items” folder.
  3. Once inside the folder, look for your lost document in the files available. If your document was saved here, you should be able to find it.
  4. If you find your document, you can move it to another location on your Mac. You can then open it with the Word application and proceed with your work.

#3. Recover Unsaved Word Doc on Mac with Auto Recovery

The Word application for Mac is designed to autosave changes made to a document. The design ensures that you don’t lose your work when you accidentally close your work without saving. It autosaves any progress or changes you make to the document in intervals. The standard saving interval is 10 minutes. When this time interval passes any changes that you would have made to your document are saved. In the event of a Mac shutdown or crush, you can retrieve a copy of your document from the Auto Recovery files. If you wish to recover your file, here are the steps you need to follow.

  1. Ensure the Word application for mac is not running
  2. On your Mac, click on “Finder.”
  3. On the Finder menu, click on “Go” and then select “Home.”
  4. Once you are in the Home menu, click on the “documents” option and then select and open the “Microsoft User Data” folder.
  5. In the folder, look for the files with the name that starts with” AutoRecovery save of.” From these files, you should be able to find your document.
  6. Once you have located your document right-click on it to rename it. Type in the name of the document and then use the .doc extension. The extension enables the file to be opened using the Word for mac application.
  7. After renaming, click on it to open the file.
  8. Read the file’s content to check if it is the document you were looking for, then go to “File” and select “save as.” Chose a name and save the document in the location that you desire.

The autosave feature only saves the work after the given interval. Using the AutoRecovery option does not guarantee recovery of the entire document. To maximize the amount of work to be saved, you might want to consider reducing the autosave time interval.

#4. Unsaved Word Recovery on Mac with Aiseesoft Mac Data Recovery

Sometimes a Word file can not only be closed without saving, but also be lost or deleted in certain situations. Such as the Word is forced to close by a system error, or your MacBook runs out of power, etc. However, you can still get a chance to recover your lost unsaved Word document on Mac with a professional Mac Data Recovery software, like Aiseesoft Mac Data Recovery.

Here’s every step the procedure of Unsaved Word Recovery involves with this excellent Mac Data Recovery tool.

  1. Download, install and run the software on your Mac.
  2. Find out the storage path of your unsaved Word doc. If it was stored on an external memory drive, connect it to your Mac. Then select the location and tick the file type, then click the scan button from the program window.
    Note: If you can’t find your Word file from the scanning result, you can use the Deep Scan function.
  3. Check the tree view or locate the file with the filer or manual search. And the last step is to click the Recover button when you select your desired file.

#5. Repair Corrupt Word Documents and Restores unsaved Formatting with Stellar Repair for Word

If your Word doc was unsaved due to a file corruption error or USB drive disconnected, and after that, the Word document won’t open normally, you can use Stellar Repair for Word to fix the corrupt Word doc and restore all the unsaved information.

What Stellar Repair for Word can do:Word document not saving on mac
  • Fix Microsoft Word 2003/2007/2010/2013/2016 not opening in 3 different modes: Simple, Advance, and Raw Recovery
  • Restore all information of your Word doc including original text, images, fonts, headers/footers, hyperlinks, bookmarks, charts, comments, etc.
  • Preview before saving.
  • Able to repairs up to 20 damaged Word documents all at once.

Word Document Not Saving On Macbook

Here are a few steps you can follow to Restore Unsaved Word doc on Mac with Stellar Repair for Word:

Step 1. Installation

Stop running Microsoft Word throughout the repairing. Then download Stellar and have it run on your Mac.

Step 2. Corrupt File selection

From the main interface, click on the File tab > Add file. With the Stellar Phoenix window pops up, you can use those three buttons, which are Select File, Select Folder and Find Files to quickly locate your corrupted Word doc. And finish this step by clicking the Scan button.

Step 3. Repair corrupt Word document.

In the last step, also the critical moment, you can repair your file in Simple, Advance, or Raw Recovery mode, depending on how severely your Word is corrupt.

Word Document Not Saving On Mac Desktop

Word is a great processor for users to create documents. However, there are some problems while creating or editing Word documents, like unsaved the Word doc while the computer is shut down, or need the previous version of Word doc, or want to recover deleted Word document on Mac. Here in the following, we covered several ways for how to recover Word document on Mac. You can download the tool to do the task efficiently.

Download for macOSDownload for Windows

'How do I restore a previous version of a Word document on Mac or recover unsaved Word document on Mac? A few minutes ago, my office suddenly shut down automatically. Today, I added the charts is gone. I really hope there is any way to help me.'

like these Disasters happen every day! If you’re looking for how to recover a Word document on Mac, you’re in the right place. This article covers all the detailed guides to recover previous version of Word document on Mac with Office history versions, restore unsaved Word document on Mac from AutoRecover folder and use the professional software to retrieve deleted Word document on Mac. You just need to skip to the right part you’re looking for and follow the steps there to achieve your goal. Let’s start to Mac Word recovery now!

Quick Navigation
Part 1. How to Recover Previous Version of Word Document on Mac for Free
Part 2. How to Restore Unsaved Word on Mac
Part 3. How to Recover Word Document on Mac after Deleted/Lost

Part 1. How to Recover Previous Version of Word Document on Mac for Free

To be honest, the theory for how to recover previous version of Word document on Mac is similar to the autoSave/autoRecover in Microsoft Word. In fact, whenever you edit , duplicate, delete or make a change of a Word document, Microsoft Word will automatically save the previous version there for you, in case you need the previous version. Here are the steps to recover lost word document on Mac:

A: Recover an old version of Word document on Mac from Office 365

Office 365 is the latest version of Microsoft's Office software. It provides a web service that allows multiple people to collaborate on a task. Therefore, it can better manage the historical version of the Word document. If you're using it and want to Mac Word restore the previous version. You just click the name of the file on the title bar, then select 'Browse Version History' to view all the previous version of Word Doc.

B: Recover previous of Word document on Mac from Office 2011/2016/2018/2020

The old version of Microsoft Office is a native program that allows only one user to use it, and different versions have different ways of finding the previous version of the Word document on Mac.

Open the current Word document, If you're using Office 2016 or 2020 for Mac, please click 'File' > 'Browse Version History'.

If you use another version, please click 'File' > 'Restore' > 'Browse Version History'.

Note: Compared with the previous version, if you haven’t done many changes for the current Word document, you can back to it by pressing the Command + Z buttons at the same time. It helps you undo the changes and recover previous version of Word document on Mac.

Part 2. How to Recover Unsaved Word Document on Mac

There are many scenarios that caused the issue of unsaved Word document: shut down Mac without saving the Word document; the Microsoft Word program crashed and not responsive so that you have to quit it without saving the document; the computer crashed, and you haven’t had time to save the word document at all. Please calm down. It is not a big deal for not being able to save Word document, because solutions available for you to recover unsaved Word document on Mac. First, please note that Microsoft Office has arranged the Word document recovery Mac solution in case of any the up-mentioned scenarios happen. It comes with 2 built-in features: AutoRecover and AutoSave.

AutoRecover allows you to recover Word document not saved on Mac which you have edited for more than once. It refers to recover the unsaved Word files which you haven’t saved after making changes on it more than once. This feature appears the next time open the Word document, popping up a reminder, asking you whether you’d like to restore the current Word to the last saved version or not. It’s up to you for restoring to which version.

AutoSave is a built-in tool that automatically saves a new document that you have created but not saved yet. It is enabled by default on your Microsoft Word on Mac. Here are the steps for how to use AutoSave to recover unsaved Word document on Mac.

1. Select 'Go' > 'Go to Folder' in the top menu. Then input '/Users/(username)/Library/Containers/com.Microsoft.Word/Data/Library/Preferences/AutoRecovery' to view the unsaved files.

2. Select the auto-saved Word document, copy it to a location on your Mac. At this point, you have successfully recover Word document not saved on Mac.

If you unexpected close other Office applications without saving files on Mac? Don't worry, You can also use the above method to recover unsaved excel file on Mac and recover PowerPoint on Mac.

Part 3. How to Recover Deleted/Lost Word Document on Mac

If you haven’t done any Word document deletion, then you can try Part 1 or Part 2 to Word recovery on Mac. However, if you have lost the Word documents on Mac due to deleted, formatted drive, or emptied the trash, etc, then you should try the following ways to recover deleted Word document on Mac.

Ways 1: Recover Deleted Word Document on Mac from Trash

If you have deleted the Word document, you should know that it is first put into Trash Can. And the validated period for it to stay is 30 days. You can open the trash can, find and select it, and click 'Restore' to save it to the original place. You can also try the spotlight on the very top right if you have remembered its name, search there, find it and drag it to the desktop. If you empty the Mac trash or permanently delete, formatted drive or other reasons due to a lost word file on Mac, you can free try the tool to recover Word document on Mac.

Ways 2: Recover Permanently Deleted Word Document on Mac

Word Document Not Saving On Mac Os

To restore lost Word Document on Mac with software. It is the most efficient way to recover Word document on Mac for lost or delete files are invisible, you can’t do anything to them without a tool. iBeesoft Data Recovery for Mac is such a tool that allows you to scan and recover deleted photos, documents, emails, videos and more from Mac or removable drives. Here are the simple steps for how to recover Word document on Mac.

Your Effective Recover Word Document Mac Software

  • It can recover Word document on Mac due to accidentally deleted, empty trash, formatted hard disk, virus attack, reinstallation or Mac OS X upgrade etc.
  • Ability to preview missing files to ensure Mac Word document recovery quality.
  • Supports recover Word file from almost all storage devices, such as hard drives, memory cards, digital cameras, players, USB drives and more.
Download for macOSDownload for Windows

Step-by-step Guide for How to Recover a Word Document on Mac

First of all, please download the latest version of the Word recovery Mac tool by clicking the download button below. Install it as the way you install other software on your Mac.

1. Run the software on your Mac. From the main window, you can see all the supported files are selected, the recover word document Mac tool is ready to scan for them. You need to uncheck them, only keep the 'Documents' option selected and click 'Start' to select your drive.

2. All storage devices, as well as external hard drives connected to your Mac, are listed there. Please select the one where you have deleted or lost the Word files and click 'Scan'. A recover Word documents Mac progress bar will tell you how it goes on with the scanning process.

3. It only takes a few minutes for this program to scan for the deleted or lost files. After then, you can see the found Word Doc in the result window. Find the one you need and click 'Recover' to save Word documents on your Mac or other drives.

Download iBeesoft Data Recovery for Mac to recover Word Document on Mac!

Word Document Did Not Save Mac

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