How to Recover Unsaved Word Documents on Mac

When working with Word on a Mac, sometimes the system crashes or Word errors cannot be fixed, causing the content being edited to be lost. So how to recover unsaved Word documents on a Mac? There is a way for users to easily recover unsaved Word documents on a Mac, according to the instructions below.

1. Recover Unsaved Word Files on Mac Using AutoRecovery

Whether or not you save your Word document, Microsoft Office automatically saves data to the AutoRecovery folder every 10 minutes.

Step 1:

First, you need to find your Mac username . Open the Terminal app , type whoami into the Terminal window, and press Enter to find it.

Step 2:

Then replace the username in the path below with the username you found. Now, copy the path below and paste it into Finder on your Mac and select Go -> Go to Folder .

/Users/username/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Word/Data/Library/Preferences/AutoRecovery/

Step 3:

The AutoRecovery folder appears immediately. Double-click the file that starts with AutoRecovery and select Microsoft Word to open it.

So you have recovered unsaved Word file on Mac.

Recover unsaved Word documents on Mac from TemporaryItems

If the above method doesn't work, try looking for unsaved Word documents in the TemporaryItems folder.

Step 1:

You open the Terminal application and paste the command — open $TMPDIR .

Step 2:

This will open the T folder. Next, scroll down to the bottom and open the TemporaryItems folder .

Step 3:

Now, in this folder, find the Word document. The file name should start with $ and end with .docx . You can double-click on it to recover the Word file.

Micah Soto

Update 03 February 2025