Can a Word document be recovered, when its physical storage media is absent?

Question

I have written an essay, and I saved it on my USB memory stick.

Being an idiot, I have proceeded to lose my memory stick.

With a deadline pending I was curious as to whether anyone knew of any way at all (temp files etc) that I could recover this Word document?

can you clarify which version of MSWord? And eventually windows version? — M'vy, Mar 16, 2011 at 13:21
To be clear, the tools in the linked articles may be able to help recover temporary files on your hard disk. At first glance, my reaction was "how can you recover files from something that's physically not there?" — Dennis Williamson, Mar 16, 2011 at 13:41
@Charlotte - I'm pretty sure most temp files get stored in the same folder as the file in progress, unless it's a brand-new file that hasn't been saved yet. So, you may be out of luck here. One thing to recommend for certain is that you don't use the computer at all until you're sure you won't be able to recover the files. If there's any possibility of recovering data from old (deleted) temp files, further usage of the system can hinder or render futile those efforts. — Iszi, Mar 16, 2011 at 14:20

M'vy · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-16 15:09:03Z

3

You may find some recovery data from %appdata%\Roaming\Microsoft\Word.

More exhaustively you can look at the microsoft support page. They provide 6 methods to recover file you wrote with word.

Some require options to be activated before, other not.

I hope you can find what you need.

answered Mar 16, 2011 at 15:09

M'vy

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