5 Ways to Recover Unsaved PowerPoint Documents

No doubt, it is disheartening to lose your important PowerPoint files especially when it costs you a lot of effort. No need to worry about it. This post will help you out in fixing up this problem. Read on to discover 5 ways that will help you recover unsaved PowerPoint documents.

1. Using Document Recovery Task pane

When there is something wrong with PowerPoint, it may be closed improperly when you are using it. Or the computer shuts down unexpectedly due to power outages, brownouts, low laptop battery or removed power cord, etc. In those cases, you don't have time to save your presentations.

Fortunately, the unsaved files will be automatically saved when the above situations happen. When you relaunch it, you can see all the unsaved files you didn't save last time on Document Recovery. And you can see the date, time, and the file name on Document Recovery. It is commended to save the recent file because it contains more content. Or you can click the down-arrow button and choose View to see the specific content. To save the file, click it and choose Save as.

If you don't see the Document Recovery pane, try to use the Recover Unsaved Presentations option.

2. Using the Recover Unsaved Presentations option

Another build-in function with Microsoft PowerPoint for saving and recover temporary PowerPoint documents. To see the temporary files, open Microsoft PowerPoint, click on "Open" in the left navigation pane, and then click Recover Unsaved Presentations below the interface. Then you can get all unsaved Excel files from the pop-up window. Select the file you want to recover.

There is one more way to browse recent unsaved files. Create a blank presentation on Microsoft PowerPoint，click on the File tab and then choose Info on the left navigation pane. Choose Manage Presentation and then click Recover Unsaved Presentations.

If there are no files that match your search, move to the next trick.

3. Using AutoRecover File Location

Another function that MS PowerPoint comes with to save temporary files is AutoRecover. You can also retrieve your unsaved documents from AutoRecover File Location. Here are the steps on how to recover unsaved PowerPoint files with AutoRecover File Location.

a. Open PowerPoint.

b. Follow the given route: File > Option >Save.

c. In the same dialogue box, copy the AutoRecover File Location path.

d. Open Windows Explorer, paste the destination path on the address bar and press "Enter". Then you can see all the temporary PowerPoint files in this file location.

Find the file you need and save it to another file location. By default, Microsoft PowerPoint save files every 10 minutes. You can decrease the time to 5 minutes or less for reducing the chances to lose unsaved files.

Still can't find the unsaved document by using this method? Proceed to the next one.

4. Recover unsaved presentations from Temp Files

Windows allows the application to store temporary files inside, so unsaved contents of your PowerPoint is possible to be saved in a temp folder. The destination path of the folder is

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Temp

How to see Temp Files:

Change the username on above destination path and paste it on the address bar of Windows Explorer. Or press Windows key + R on your keyboard and type "%temp%" in the run prompt. After pressing the "Enter" key, you can see all the temporary documents in the folder.

How to find the file you want:

If you have lots of temp files, we recommended searching the PowerPoint files by entering search queries in the search box of File Explorer. The search queries include *.pptx, *.ppt, ppt*.tmp.

If you know the modified date, size, or other information about the file you want to search, you can sort the files with specific information to find lost files quicker. For example, when you know the file is created on January 26, you can sort the file with the created time. On the View tab, click "Sort by", and choose the "Date Created". Save the files which are created on January 26 to another location. Then open them to find the file you want.

If the file is not found yet, follow the next method.

5. Restore unsaved files in the Recycle Bin

If there is no temp file, then your PowerPoint files are very likely to be deleted. In this case, try to restore them in the Recycle Bin with these steps. Open the Recycle Bin, search the keyword like temp, ppt, etc., in the input box on the right, and press Enter. Then all the temp files are displayed on the screen.

You can restore all of those, or try to distinguish those similar files by using several tricks we've written in the article: How to Restore Deleted Excel Files from Recycle Bin. Please noted that deleted files would back to their original location when you restore them. Therefore, search the file at its original location after recovering it from the Recycle Bin.